The March Of The Nation

THE MARCH OF A NATION

THE MARCH OF A
NATION

olATj Year of Spain*s Qivil War

By

HAROLD G. CARDOZO

Special correspondent of the London “Daily Mail”
with the Nationalist Forces in Spain

SPECIAL EDITION FOR

THE “RIGHT” BOOK CLUB

10 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.i

Pirst published

Reprinted for the Rwjit Rook Club

. UAm Am* in «i«at iniimw

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. THE RISING, JULY 18, 1936 1

II. THE RACE FOR THE GUADARRAMA PASSES, JULY 25 21

HI. THE MOVEMENT IN THE SOUTH, BADAJOZ, AUGUST 14 5a

IV. IRUN AND SAN SEBASTIAN, AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER 75

V. THE RELIEF OF THE ALCAZAR AT TOLEDO,

SEPTEMBER 27-8 9 S

VI. FRANCO, GENERALISSIMO AND CHIEF OF STATE 138

VII. THE FIRST ASSAULT ON MADRID, OCTOBER 1936 154

VIII. STALEMATE ON THE MADRID FRONT, NOVEMBER-

DECEMBER 1936 *8*

IX. THE ATTACKS ON THE CORUNNA ROAD, WEST OF
MADRID, DECEMBER 1936-JANUARY 1937. THE
JARAMA AND GUADALAJARA 213

X. BILBAO, JUNE 19, 1937 2 ®9

XL THE FUTURE C^' SPAIN 3 °S

3 -

4 *

LIST OF PLATES

at the end of the book

FLAT*

i, GENERAL FRANCO

z. BASQUE VOLUNTEERS FROM NAVARRE
GENERAL QUE 1 PO DE LLANO

MAQUEDA, SEPTEMBER 1936, AFTER ITS CAPTURE BY
THE NATIONALIST FORCES
BURGOS: THE ENTRY OF THE MOORISH TROOPS
ACCLAIMED BY THE PEOPLE
THE ALCAZAR OF TOLEDO, SHOWING THE COURTYARD
AFTER THE SIEGE

GENERAL FRANCO RECEIVING THE OATH OF ALLE¬
GIANCE FROM PROMINENT CITIZENS OF BURGOS,
AFTER HIS APPOINTMENT AS CHIEF OF STATE
THE GUADARRAMA FRONT, OCTOBER 1936. DESTROYED
BRIDGE ON THE ROAD FROM VALMOJADO TO
YUNCOS

GENERAL VARELA AND A GROUP OF HIS STAFF
OFFICERS

A GROUP OF OFFICERS AND MEN OF THE LEGION REST¬
ING AFTER THE TAKING OF NAVALCARRERO
NATIONALISTS ADVANCING IN THE SUBURBS OF
MADRID

DURING THE ADVANCE ON MADRID
NATIONALIST TROOPS GOING INTO ACTION ON THE
MADRID FRONT

THE AUTHOR, WITH VICTOR CONSOLE AND JEAN
D’HOSPITAL AT BRUNETE, NOVEMBER 1936
THE AUTHOR WITH COLONEL TELLA, NOVEMBER 13
* 93 $

SNOWED UP ON THE ROAD FROM AVILA TO TALAVERA
LA REINA, NOVEMBER 1936

THE GRAND PLACE AT AVILA: WAITING FOR THE,
LATEST NEWS

ENTRY OF THE CARLIST TROOPS INTO TOLOSA
THE ENTRY INTO BILBAO: SCENES OF POPULAR RE¬
JOICING

vii

8 .

10 .

12 .

14.

<5*

16.

Vf,

18.

19.

THE SPANISH WAR

20. THE ENTRY INTO BILBAO: UNFURLING THE NATIONAL¬
IST FLAG

aI . ARMS TAKEN FROM THE REDS 1 'ILED UP IN FRONT OF
THE TOWN HALL OF BILBAO

22. BURGOS: THE CIVILIAN POPULATION ACCLAIMING

GENERAL FRANCO AFTER THE SUCCESSFUL CON¬
JUNCTION OF THE NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN
NATIONALIST ARMIES

23. SALAMANCA, NOV. 18, u) 36: ENTHUSIASTIC SCENES AT

THE OFFICIAL RECOGNITION OF THE SPANISH
NATIONALIST GOVERNMENT BY ITALY AND GER¬
MANY

24. SALAMANCA, MARCH 1937- GENERAL FRANCO AND

THE ITALIAN AMBASSADOR AFTER THE LATTER
HAD PRESENTED IIIS CREDENTIALS, ACKNOW¬
LEDGING THE APPLAUSE OF THE CROWD

LIST OF MAPS

GENERAL MAP OF SPAIN SHOWING CHIEF PHYSICAL

FEATURES AND TOWNS End of Bonk

VMM

MAP SHOWING THE AREA OF SPAIN CONTROLLED BY
THE NATIONALIST FORCES (SHADED) AND THE
MADRID GOVERNMENT (WHITE) IN AUGUST 19,p. 2*
MAP SHOWING THE AREA OF SPAIN CONTROLLED BY
THE NATIONALIST FORCES (SHADED) AND BY TDK
VALENCIA GOVERNMENT (WHITE) IN JULY 1937 23

SKETCH MAP SHOWING POSITION OF THE ALTO DK

LEON PASS 4 *

SKETCH MAP SHOWING THE POSITION OF 1 RUN, SAN

SEBASTIAN, VITORIA AND PAMPKLONA 77

SKETCH MAP SHOWING LINE OF ADVANCE OF TOLEDO
RELIEF FORCE wi

SKETCH MAP ILLUSTRATING THE ATTACK ON MADRID,
MARCH 1937 US

SKETCH MAP ILLUSTRATING THE OPERATIONS LEAD¬
ING TO THE CAPTURE OF BILBAO Xjl

THE MARCH OF A NATION

I

THE RISING, JULY 18, 1936

I N the spring of 1936 the so-called Spanish Popular
Front gained a scanty nominal victory at the polls.
Radicals, Socialists, Communists, and even Anarchists, in
alliance, had put to the best use the anomalies of the
Spanish electoral laws, and the wave of discontent due
to unemployment and economic depression, to snatch a
majority of seats in the Cortes. Actually, they had failed
to obtain a majority of votes throughout the country.
The total votes cast for the Popular Front were 4,356,000,
while those for the Right and Centre were 4,910,000.
On this showing the parties of the Right and Centre
should have had a majority of seats, but owing to the
Republican electoral law the seats were at first distributed
as follows: Popular Front 256, Right and Centre 217.
Thus the so-called reactionary parties had over 500,000
more votes but were given some forty fewer seats. Worse
was to come. When the Cortes sat, the commission for
the verification of mandates got to work. It had been
l carefully “packed” for the occasion, and it gave Right
seats away to Socialists and Communists with glaring
partiality, so that when the Cortes was finally consti¬
tuted the Popular Front found itself the unabashed
"possessor of 295 seats, while the Right and Centre, for all
that they had polled 500,000 more votes, had merely
177 seats. This was the great triumph of the Popular
Front at the polls in February 1936.

There was nothing surprising in this, for the Spanish

I •

THE SPANISH WAR

revolutionaries have never been a majority in Spain.
They have always prated about the voice of the people
and of the right of majorities to rule, but they have always
exercised power by gross electoral frauds and by imposing
the will of a minority on the rest of the people. The
downfall of the monarchy followed the first municipal
elections in Spain, after the Primo de Rivera dictatorship,
when actually the vote of the people showed a clear
and impressive majority in favour of the retention of
the monarchist principle. Thus the Spanish Republic
was founded on the fraudulent assumption that a Left
majority in a few cities had the privilege of overruling
a great monarchical majority in the boroughs and country
districts.

From the moment that the Popular Front government
took office it was visible to anybody acquainted with
Spain and with Spanish history that civil war could not
be far away. The revolutionary parties in Spain can
never control the unruly and criminal elements which
form the main part of its marching left wing, and it
was certain that Spain was about to face another period
of murders, burnings and public disorders in general.

It must be remembered that the Spanish race is a
strange ethnological medley. Standing as it does on the
extreme west of the Mediterranean, the great pathway
of the ages, the Iberian Peninsula has seen more invasions
and more settlements, possibly, than any other European
country.. Many of these invasions have been Asiatic and
African in their origin. The Carthaginians, themselves
Semitic, brought in their legions countless Asiatic tribes,

while the Moors were only a little more eclectic.

. Spain grew up through the “reconquest” on feudal
lines which, though influenced and altered by local

2

THE RISING

conditions, would not have seemed strange to a Norman
or a German baron. Sometimes traces of Scandinavian
law, as along the Basque coast, altered the conditions of
chieftainship and of land transfer, but the general con¬
ditions were European and not Semitic, Asiatic, or Moor¬
ish. The Moors and the Jews found themselves out of
touch with the new regime and oppressed. But this was
nothing to the secret and unseen struggle which must
have gone on in thousands of heads and hearts, all the
more powerful because it was unsuspected even by the
persons themselves, between Asiatic and African longings
and impulses and the new laws of restriction and self-
denial.

Spain is a deeply religious land, and yet from time to
time throughout the ages when there has been revolu¬
tion, these suppressed emotions of savage cruelty, of
Asiatic barbarity, have come to the front. They are
always most noticeable in those parts where the mixture
of Asiatic and African blood is the strongest. That is
why Navarre and the Basque countries, Old Castile and
Aragon, Leon and the Asturias, have been freer than
other Spanish provinces of the terrible blood guilt which
during the past year has afflicted Spain. It is necessary
to interpose here that the so-called Asturian miners
who have rendered themselves so notorious are seldom
of Asturian descent, and that the vast majority of the
real fixed inhabitants of that province are Bight and
Nationalist.

As long ago as 1929 I pointed out the inevitable associa¬
tion between Republicanism and disorder and massacre
in a long conversation I had at that moment with Senor
Alexander Lerroux, then a prominent leader of the
Republican Party, striving to upset the monarchy and

3

THE SPANISH WAR

send King Alfonso into exile. He was to succeed only
too well barely two years later.

Senor Lerroux, when I spoke to him of the downfall
of the first Spanish Republic, due entirely to national
reaction against its violence and its excesses, prophesied
that the new Spanish Republic would be conservative
and would stand for public order and the respect of life
and property. “If it does not,” he went on, “if it becomes
Socialist or Communist it will be swept away, for Spain
will not tolerate mob rule or Communism.”

The same Senor Lerroux seven years later, after he
himself had taken part in the Republican government of
his country and had witnessed fresh examples of the blood
lust and ferocity of his allies of the Left, has had once
more to proclaim that the real Spain will not accept such
atrocities. Asked for a statement on the National
movement, this is what he says: “It is by no means a
question of a military pronunciamento, but of a national
rising as legitimate and holy as the War of Independence
in 1808. It is even more sacred, for it is not a question
only of political independence, but of social and economic
organisation, of the protection of home, property, culture,
conscience and very life; in a word, of a whole civilisation
as handed down in history.”

The summer of 1936, therefore, found Spain with an
extreme Left government, apparently firmly in power,
and with murders and the burnings of churches going
on all over the country. Even at that moment had the
Government announced its firm intention of suppressing
disorder, of dealing with the Communist menace—every¬
body knew that the Communists were planning a coup
d’foat —it is possible that it would have found support
not only in the country but from responsible Army leaders.

4

THE RISING

But the Government not only refused to see the Com¬
munist danger, not only refrained from taking action to
punish the criminal leaders of the bands that roamed
about the country, with murder and arson for their
objectives, but actually embroiled itself in political
murder.

Without waiting for the meeting of the Cortes, Senor
Azana, the President, who has now abandoned all power
and initiative and who has spent the war skulking in
reclusion in palaces at [Madrid, Valencia and [Montserrat,
but who was then only a party leader, seized power.
Mob violence was immediately set loose. In Madrid
churches and a newspaper office were burnt down, while
at Granada eleven buildings were set on fire in a single
day.

Here is the balance sheet for the first six weeks of

Popular Front government in Spain:

Assaults and robberies:

At political headquarters

5 *

Public and private
dwellings .

establishments and

• » • *

ios

Churches

• • • •

36

Fires:

At political headquarters

12

Public and private
dwellings .

establishments and

• • • •

60

Churches

• * • *

lOO

Disturbances:

General strikes

• * • *

11

Risings and revolts

•

169

Persons killed

• • • •

76

Wounded .

• • • •

346

5

THE SPANISH WAR

When the Cortes met and when it became increasingly
apparent that the Government not only did nothing to
stop such crimes but appeared actually to be encouraging
them, the Opposition members began to protest. They
did so in face of daily threats of violence. They were
howled down by their men and women comrades, the
latter being foremost in giving the example of mob
brutality. Time and time again they were told they
would not leave the Cortes building alive. Pistols were
levelled at them, and the Government took no steps to
restrain this violence; the vilest of insults were hurled at
them in the Cortes itself, and there were no rebukes
even from the president of the so-called parliamentary
assembly.

The final protest was made by Senor Calvo Sotelo, the
brave and talented Royalist leader, on July n. It was
the signal for his death and thus directly for the outbreak
of the Nationalist movement. By that time, five months
after the Azana government had taken power, the list
of disorders showing to what a state Spain had been
reduced was as follows:

113 general strikes,

218 partial strikes,

284 buildings burned,

171 churches, 69 clubs and 10 newspaper offices
completely burned down,

3,300 assassinations.

Senor Calvo Sotelo drew a graphic picture of the evils
that Spain was suffering, and demanded from the Govern¬
ment a promise that steps would be taken to bring these
disorders and these crimes to an end. Senor Casares
Quiroga, then Premier, only answered by a threat of

6

THE RISING

violence. “Yon will be held personally responsible for
the emotion which your speech will cause,” he said, at
the same time as that female fury Dolores Ibarruri, since
notorious for her hysterical thirst for blood, and perhaps
more notorious as “Pasionaria,” shouted: “That man has
made his last speech. 55

She was right. On July 13 a police car, number 17,
arrived at Senor Calvo Sotelo’s house with fifteen Assault
Guards under Captain Moreno. They were admitted
to the house and went to Senor Sotelo s room to invite
him to go with them to police headquarters. Senor
Sotelo’s wife wished to telephone to the Government, but
was prevented from doing so. Unresisting, the Monarch¬
ist leader followed the police. Later Casares Quiroga
professed ignorance of the whole affair, but the body of
Calvo Sotelo was found with a bullet through his head in
the eastern cemetery. In the circumstances, there are
few who can believe that the Government was not at the
very least cognisant of the plot, even, if they were not,
which is more probable, its instigators. The crime sent
a wave of indignation throughout Spain just at the
psychological moment.

Leaders of the Army, moderate men like Queipo de
Llano, Mola and Franco, had come to the conclusion that
something had to be done to restore law and order before
it was too late. In other words, insurrection had become
the most sacred duty of the Spanish people.

- Officers had been sounded throughout the country,
and the great majority of them were in favour of a
movement which, taking the form of a Junta of Defence,
would substitute itself for the weak and criminal Govern¬
ment of Madrid. The Communist menace was looming
every day larger. It appears that originally the Army

THE SPANISH WAR

movement had been planned for August, but when it
became known that the Communists were preparing to
rise throughout Spain at the end of July it was necessary
to hasten things.

As originally proposed, the Nationalist movement would
have been widespread and capable of bringing instan¬
taneous success. Possibly the necessity for taking action
a full fortnight before the date first fixed left a number
of threads loose in the conspiracy. Certainly the degree
of preparation of the Communists and Anarchists was
greater than had been suspected.

It had been hoped that the whole fleet would stand in
with the Army, while it was expected that both Madrid
and Barcelona, as well as the ports, would be overawed
by the display of military strength, coupled with the
menace of the naval guns. Everything at the outset
did not, however, go in accordance with plan. In some
cases generals in command wavered and hesitated and
lost golden opportunities. The crews of many ships,
won over to Communist doctrines, rose and, murdering
their, officers, took control. Freedom of sea communica¬
tion, which would enable the well-disciplined troops
from Spanish Morocco to be brought across by transport
within a week, was jeopardised.

In Barcelona, General Goded, energetic though he
was, appears to have hesitated for some fateful hours.
The police and Civil Guard, finding themselves without
that bold direction they expected from the Army, went
over to the Catalonian Government, and the movement in
the whole of that province was submerged in an ocean of
blood. It is not my intention to write at length about
the massacres and the orgy of crime which took place
in Barcelona and other places like Malaga, Valencia and

8

THE RISING

Alicante, where the Nationalist movement failed. They
have already been recorded in part, but the full tale of
the reign of terror inflicted by the Reds on those unfortu¬
nate populations, the list of their crimes against women,
children and old men, cannot be completed until order
has been restored and all those witnesses who are still
alive have been heard.

But while in the east and at Madrid the movement
had apparently failed, it had succeeded in the south and
in the north. Old Castille was practically solid for the
Nationalist Anti-Red cause. In Navarre the Carlists,
a great and growing force, had risen to a man, first to
defend their own homes from Red invasion, and secondly
to join in the general movement to extirpate Marxism
from the rest of Spain. On the night of July 18, when
the message went from city to city announcing that the
Army had risen, the tocsin sounded in every church
through the length and breadth of Navarre. It sounded
on the mountain-tops and in the valleys, and an hour
later the young men with their scarlet berets were march¬
ing ofi under the orders of the village elders to occupy
the passes and the roads along which the Reds might
advance from Catalonia on the east, Madrid on the south,
and the half Red, ha If Home Rule Basque provinces to
the west.

The young men of Don Antonio Primo de Rivera, the
Spanish Falangists, in their blue shirts embroidered with
the five arrows in scarlet, had sunk their political differ¬
ences and offered the support of all their forces through¬
out Spain to General Mola. Their leader was in that
prison in eastern Spain which he was never to leave alive,
but he had built well and loyally, and all his men took
up arms for the defence of national ideals.

9

THE SPANISH WAR

This, therefore, was the strength, at the outset, of the
two sides. The Reds, apparently, held most of the trump
cards. They had the central Government in Madrid,
they had all its money and resources. Behind them was
the weight of the Red town populations, with their
syndical and political organisations. They had part of
the Army and Civil Guard, most of the ports, and the
majority of the fleet. Also, and not negligible, at the
beginning, they had the majority of the then ill-informed
public opinion of the world.

The Nationalists, on the other hand, held the greater

P art tlle western anc * central agricultural provinces;
they had the religious fervour and idealism of a compact
Carlist Party, with its invaluable companies of sturdy
mountaineers; they had the cohorts of the Falange
Espanola, or the Spanish Phalanx, as Don Antonio’s party

is called, and, finally, they had the great majority of the
Army.,

In those first days, from the 18th of July to the 25th,
the fate of the Nationalist movement was being decided
Three questions loomed before the generals and party
leaders. A negative reply to any one of these three would
have meant the failure of the movement and an era of
murderous repression by the Madrid Reds, which would
have plunged in blood the whole of Spain where, so far,
law and order prevailed. These questions were: Could
General Queipo de Llano hold Seville? Could General
Mola retain his command over the naval arsenal of
rerrol? And, finally, could the Nationalists ensure the
worHng of the railways and the supply of petrol needed
tor their immense columns of motor transport? The life
or death of the movement depended on each of these
three questions. Let me take them one by one.

10

THE RISING

. * n Seville, General Queipo de Llano lived hours of
history such as are given to few men. He and his assis¬
tants, many of them men of humble degree, saved Seville
for the Nationalist cause, held the coast and the ports
of Cadiz and Algeciras, and kept up contact with the
loyal and well-trained African Army, on whose ultimate
arrival in Spain so much depended.

I saw General Queipo de Llano a few days after he
had consolidated his position in the south of Spain and
when the danger of failure was only just behind Mm.
From his lips, and later from many of his officers—men
like Castejon, Telia and Melendez—I was able to piece
together the story of those first epic days in sunny Seville.
General Queipo de Llano, who had had a distinguished
military career, is a tall man with broad shoulders.
Ample iron-grey hair crowns a thoughtful face, seamed
by years of military effort. He is one of those men who
rarely smile, except with their eyes, and his have often a
humorous twinkle which belies the cold impassiveness of
his general aspect.

When the signal for the rising was given in Seville,
General Queipo de Llano, owing to a variety of circum¬
stances, and particularly due to the fact that the Azana
administration had cut down Army effectives so ruthlessly,
had barely 180 trained soldiers on whom he could depend!
Acting with the vigour of his character, however, he
used this handful of men to the best advantage and,
seizing the strategic points of Seville, was able during the
night of July 18 to overawe the teeming population,
many of whom were Communists at heart and hundreds
of whom were armed and actually preparing for the Red
revolution planned to take place seven days later.

But it was obvious that reinforcements must be rushed

ii

THE SPANISH WAR

to the spot by the next morning, or else the bluff would
be called and the General and his tiny garrison would be
swept away. In his headquarters at the Captain-General¬
ship at Seville, a typical southern Spanish building with
tiled walls, lofty carved ceilings and spacious white patios.
General Queipo de Llano sat all night with the telephone
to his ear while haggard officers brought him the pink
slips from the field wireless set up in the street outside.
The news was bad. It could not have been worse. Red
ships flying the Madrid flag were patrolling the Straits of
Gibraltar; in ships which had adhered to the move¬
ment the crews had mutinied and had trained their guns
on Ceuta and other African ports so as to prohibit any
embarkation of troops. From Cadiz and other places
there came telephone messages reporting Communist
armed concentrations; from the suburbs of Seville were
frantic appeals for help as the Civil Guard were being
attacked and overpowered by the Red militia. There were
only 180 men with rifles to hold the city, and no prospect
of help from Africa.

The night hours were passing, and still the General
sat there, white-faced but grim. He shifted his tiny
garrison from place to place to make it look more effective.
At some points machine-guns were being manned by
crews consisting of staff officers, with a lieutenant-colonel
actually seated at the piece and a major handing him the
ammunition. The flush of dawn was just appearing
over the hills in the east when there came the roar of a
great ’plane flying in from the sea. It was one of General
Franco’s Army transport ’planes and it was bringing a
gallant little band to the rescue. Apart from the pilot
and his assistant, there were eleven men in the ’plane. All
of them were men of the Spanish Legion. At their head

12

THE RISING

was Captain Melendez; there was one sergeant and one
corporal, and the remaining eight were privates. Since
then I have talked over the events of that day many a time
with Captain Melendez in his dug-out in the front¬
line trenches of Madrid, or at a base hospital where he
was being tended for one of his many wounds.

Of middle stature, slight in build but with steel muscles,
Captain Melendez was for me the very picture of some
fifteenth-century soldier of fortune. Pissaro or Cortes
must have been of a similar type. Raven-black hair slightly
brushed with grey, side-whiskers like interrogation marks
cut short in the middle of the cheek, a chin with a slight
cleft jutting out from under a smiling mouth, bushy black
eyebrows looking somewhat quizzical over a pair of flashing,
burning black eyes. A man rapid in speech and rapid
and inflexible in action. A leader of men, I have seen him
with his bandera or battalion of the Legion, and never
have I seen such blind devotion as his men offered him.
The Spanish legion mourn him now. He was killed in
May 1936 near Pozoblanco in the province of Cordoba.

There was little need to give orders to such a man.
Out of the ’plane, Captain Melendez mounted the
machine-gun he brought with him, in the cab of a great
six-wheeled lorry, ordered his men to jump in, and dashed
off to the Captain-Generalship. There he was told what
the situation was and in what suburbs the Reds were
concentrating. “That is enough,” he said to the staff
officer. “Give me a map and I will deal with them.” Five
minutes later the lorry was roaring through the streets
at fifty miles an hour heading straight for the Red
assembly point. Shouts rang out: “The Legion has
arrived,” and the legionaries shouted also. Within a
breath of time all Seville, in true southern way, was ringing

r 3

THE SPANISH WAR

with the news, and already, prudent men who had brought
out their rifles to join with the victorious Reds were
creeping home to hide them while they slipped off their
Red armlets.

The machine-gun stammered and stuttered every time
a hostile armed group could be seen at a street corner.
The Reds were on the run in every direction. Changing
from a blue lorry to a red, and then back into a green
one, Captain Melendez and his little band circled the
city at top speed, giving to the terrified Syndicalists the
impression that several companies at least of the dreaded
Legion were there. Within two hours the suburbs had
quietened down, the armed men had disappeared, and the
Civil Guards and the Blue Assault Police were breaking
into the Trade Union headquarters and other Red meet¬
ing places without any opposition, and seizing the stands
of arms and cases of ammunition prepared for the equip¬
ment of the Communist militia. Before twenty-four
hours had passed, all the Red arsenals had been seized and
all the weapons were piled in the courtyard of the Captain-
Generalship, where they were being distributed to the
Falangist and Carlist volunteers. The weapons bought
and stored away by the Reds were to be used against
them by their bitterest enemies. Captain Melendez and
his legionaries had saved Seville. There were only five of
them left when night fell. Three had been killed and
others were in hospital. Melendez had a bullet through
his left hand, but he refused to go to hospital for what
he called a scratch, though when I saw him four weeks
later he was still unable to use his left hand, and laugh¬
ingly said that it had made him economical as he found
it so difficult to roll a cigarette with only one hand.

Before dusk of the second day of the movement other

14

THE SPANISH WAR

with the news, and already prudent men who had brought
out their rifles to join with the victorious Reds were
creeping home to hide them while they slipped off their
Red armlets.

The machine-gun stammered and stuttered every time
a hostile armed group could be seen at a street corner.
The Reds were on the run in every direction. Changing
from a blue lorry to a red, and then back into a green
one, Captain Melendez and his little band circled the
city at top speed, giving to the terrified Syndicalists the
impression that several companies at least of the dreaded
Legion were there. Within two hours the suburbs had
quietened down, the armed men had disappeared, and the
Civil Guards and the Blue Assault Police were breaking
into the Trade Union headquarters and other Red meet¬
ing places without any opposition, and seizing the stands
of arms and cases of ammunition prepared for the equip¬
ment of the Communist militia. Before twenty-four
hours had passed, all the Red arsenals had been seized and
all the weapons were piled in the courtyard of the Captain-
Generalship, where they were being distributed to the
Falangist and Carlist volunteers. The weapons bought
and stored away by the Reds were to be used against
them by their bitterest enemies. Captain Melendez and
his legionaries had saved Seville. There were only five of
them left when night fell. Three had been killed and
others were in hospital. Melendez had a bullet through
his left hand, but he refused to go to hospital for what
he called a scratch, though when I saw him four weeks
later he was still unable to use his left hand, and laugh¬
ingly said that it had made him economical as he found
it so difficult to roll a cigarette with only one hand.

Before dusk of the second day of the movement other

H

THE RISING

’planes had arrived, and a small bnt extremely efficient
force was being built up under General Queipo de Llano,
a force which, ultimately, when it grew to the strength
of a division, was to march from the coast to Madrid.
Major Castejon, whose column was to be famous so soon,
was the second officer to arrive in the second ’plane, and
soon he had three hundred men under his command.
Seville had been saved; complete liaison had been main¬
tained between General Franco in Africa and General
Queipo de Llano in Seville; the control of the southern
ports remained in the hands of the Nationalists. One
great and vital asset for future victory had been secured.
In six days arms and equipment for 4,000 volunteers and
200 tons of stores were also brought over by air to Jerez.

While all this was happening at Seville, there were
bloody massacres taking place at Ferrol. Officers both of
the Army and Navy, who were there, told me that they
lived through such a nightmare that it was impossible
for them to make any detailed report of exactly what
had taken place. They could not even reconstitute the
chronological order of events. The city itself changed
hands from Red militia to the forces of the Army and
back again half a dozen times. A dozen different battles
were taking place in and around Ferrol between the
Reds and the Nationalist volunteers, Falangists or
Carlists. In the arsenal itself the confusion was even
worse. Ships were fighting ships at ranges of one
hundred yards. The fore turret of one ship might have
a Red crew, and the rear turret might be controlled by
Nationalists. Crews might mutiny and capture a ship
for the Reds, and a half an hour later the officers who had
taken refuge down below might rally a scratch fighting
party of stokers and recapture it. Two Nationalist ships

15

THE SPANISH WAR

blazed at each other for ten minutes before a frantic
officer from a fighting-top was able to find out the situa¬
tion by an exchange of signals.

In one of the dry docks was the Almirante Gervera,
of which the Nationalists held control of the two turrets
and the forward decks only. Mutinous Red members of
the crew held the between-decks and the stern. A battle¬
ship, the Espana, then entirely Red, was shelling it from
the other side of the harbour, and the turrets of the Gervera
could not be brought to bear as they could not fire over
the sides of the dock. Four sallies were made by the
Nationalists to try to reach the dock sluices and open
them, so as to float the Gervera sufficiently high in the
water for her guns to be brought into action. Three
times all the men were swept down by machine-gun fire
from a Red position in the arsenal on shore, but the
fourth time two young officers and two quartermasters
succeeded. A party of blue-shirted Nationalist militia
were marched on board at the last moment, and they
besieged the Reds in the stern and finally overcame them.
It was then found that even there the ship had been
divided as, when the Reds surrendered, a small party of
the loyal crew were able to leave a part of the engine-room
where they also had been beseiged.

Finally, the Gervera floated and brought all its guns fo
bear on the Esparto?s decks, and the mutinous crew in that
battleship which, though old, was quite powerful, flew
the white flag of surrender. At the same time, the fight¬
ing in the arsenal and the town died down. Ferrol was
held for the Nationalists; the arsenal itself had not been
too badly damaged; the ships, including two submarines,
which were being built had not been destroyed, and
General Franco had the nucleus of a navy to pit against

16

THE RISING

the Red fleet, based on Valencia and Carthagena. Vigo
was kept for the Nationalist cause as a port through which
supplies could be sent. The Nationalist fleet was able
after hurried repairs to put to sea, this time with complete
guarantees as to the loyalty of its crews, and they were
able to free the Straits of Gibraltar of Red vessels and
thus ensure the safe transhipment of General Franco’s
first fifteen thousand men from Spanish Africa, and to
keep the passage open for the reinforcements which
continue to pour across to keep this expeditionary force
of the Spanish Legion, of the Moorish Regulares and the
Riff Rifles, up to full strength despite battle casualties.
Once again, the fortunes of war were on the side of the
Nationalists and they had escaped the terrible danger
of losing Ferrol, their only arsenal, and thus completely
losing control of the sea. At the present moment, the
fruits of that victory can be seen, with all the Red fighting
ships, almost without exception, lying up idle in Valencia
or Carthagena, while the Nationalist fleet can shell and
blockade Red ports and wreak havoc among the Red
supply ships.

The third vital necessity for the Nationalists was of a
civilian character. Could General Mola in the north
force the railwaymen to resume work, keep the railway
lines open to Vigo, and pour through the country the
millions of gallons of petrol needed to keep the war
machine going?

When I first hurriedly toured the north of Spain, for
a few hours trying, probably foolishly and certainly in
great ignorance, to make my way through the Red lines
to the Patriot forces in the centre, no trains were running.
The Madrid syndicates had ordered a general strike and
this was being fully applied by all the railway workers.

17

THE SPANISH WAR

„ , M „ u rushed out a decree bearing bis signature

General Mola ru h under the dire penalty

ordering everybody ^ of kw ^ tke

of instant execution un . w as: would the

t of f";J^xrof civil war, could

S “f X g “tZs- t " own that die supply
XXT?n Se countiy was insufficient for the huge
demands of the Army motor traffic first, and, secon ^y,

f X c;i,r« "rith issuing

mittee of railway engineers ^ territory

rank and power, while the Civil Gna l q{ ^
under Nationalist control were set to t tQ

ontahtherahwa^^^^tter ^ tr ains
start work at once. 7 ^ glowly climbing the

were running, and th TWesca to Bnrgos, was

"“'iXe? a different story as to how these reservoirs
were refilled time after time during 1 the ““P^ry gaUon
Madrid Reds had to pay in gold to ^ <h Xf tion-

of petrol sent to Valencia and Barce , ^ ^ creli ; t .

ahst government w^amp^ snppb d^ h p ^

This was due to the fact that mteii g

realised that the Nationalists

that the Nationalists would pay, very ear y

In other words, Nationahst credit was good and the K

credit was bad. ^

THE RISING

A word must be said as regards the speed with,
which volunteers flocked to the Nationalist side. At the
outset undoubtedly it was the marvellously efficient help
brought by the Carlist organisation in Navarre which
counted most. Ultimately the Falangist militia, which
provided some excellent fighting units, became the
larger, but the strength during the first critical days lay
with that splendid body of troops, the Navarre Brigades
of Requetes, and they continued to show their mettle
throughout the war.

On the first day of the movement there were ip,ooo
Carlists, equipped and armed with motor transport and
with machine-guns. These were immediately placed at
the orders of General Mola, while the Carlist Junta de
Guerra was preparing additional tercios of Requetes.
These formations have gone on during the war, and in
the offensive against Bilbao there took part five Brigades
of Navarre. The number of Requetes under arms and
serving in various sectors now amounts to just over
a hundred thousand.

As the National movement swept forward, as towns
and villages were freed, the same desire to volunteer and
help the cause was shown. Each city or district immedi-
ately set itself to work to set up and equip one new unit,
usually in the south and centre, of Falangists.

It must be remembered that Nationalist Spain had
until July of 1937 only mobilised five classes of conscripts,
that is to say, young men between the ages of twenty
and twenty-six, and that the bulk of the Nationalist army
was at all times composed of volunteers. There is nothing
to compel a young man under twenty to go to the front,
or a man of over twenty-six. Yet there are youths from
the age of sixteen and upwards among the Requetes and

19

THE SPANISH WAR

Falangists, and older men to well past fifty. That is the
best proof of the National enthusiasm, which does not
need compulsion, but sends the Spaniard, whether he be
aristocrat or workman, to the trenches to fight for the
New Spain.

20

II

THE RACE FOR THE GUADARRAMA PASSES

JULY 25

F ROM the outset it became clear that the war in
Spain would be divided into sectors by the very
geography of the country. When one takes a peninsula
with an immense high central plateau, seamed with
mountain ranges rising to six thousand and seven thousand
feet in height, it is apparent that sweeping plans of cam¬
paign are not possible. All the generals who have fought
in Spain, from Hannibal and Caesar to the great Napoleon
himself, have had to modify their strategy to the physical
conditions of the country.

It was obvious that the fighting for Madrid would
have at first to be on the great semicircular range of
the Guadarrama mountains. It was also obvious that
there would be a secondary campaign between Aragon
and Catalonia in the east, between Navarre and the
separatists of Viscaya in the west, while in the south
round Cordoba and Malaga, south and north of the
great Sierra Moreno, there would be at the same time
half a dozen minor fronts in existence.

But from the outset several points of importance stood
out clearly. It was necessary for the Nationalists:

I. To reach the Guadarrama and bottle up the passes
so that the Reds could not swarm over the plains
of Castille and attack the provisional seat of
government.

21

THE SPANISH WAR

2. To capture Irun and San Sebastian early in the
war so as to cut off at least that link with France
and reassure the sober north,
g. To defend Saragossa and Aragon and cut direct
communication between Barcelona and Madrid.

MAP SHOWING THE AREA OF SPAIN CONTROLLED BY THE NATIONALIST
FORCES (SHADED) AND THE MADRID GOVERNMENT (WHITIi) IN AUGUST

I936

4. To march by the roundabout line of the Guadiana
valley and then up the Tagus valley, thus avoid¬
ing the mountains, to the relief of Toledo and the
“bottling up” if not the capture of Madrid.

It is these operations, each of which, though strictly

22

THE RACE FOR THE GUADARRAMA PASSES

military, also had its political motives and was finally
shaped and fashioned by geographical factors, which I
am about to describe in the following chapters.

It was on July 19, when the first news reached Europe
of the Army rising, that the telephone rang in my Paris

MAP SHOWING THE AREA OF SPAIN CONTROLLED BY THE NATIONALIST
FORCES (SHADED) AND BY THE VALENCIA GOVERNMENT (WHITE) IN

JULY I937

office and I received instructions from the Editor of the
Daily Mail to go to Spain and find out what was hap¬
pening. Accustomed to such missions, it did not take me
more than a few minutes to pick up my valise, already half
packed, and to catch my train. During previous trouble
in Spain I had always managed to make my way through

23

THE SPANISH WAR

Irun and San Sebastian, even when the roads were cut by
barricades and trenches, and I hoped this time to do the
same and reach Burgos, which I had already learnt, from
my agents on the frontier, was the centre of the movement.
A feverish twenty-four hours’ driving here and there in
my car ended, however, in my being brought before a
Red “Committee of Public Safety” seated in a school
house at Irun. I was escorted there by a “comrade” in
blue overalls, who was carrying a loaded and cocked shot¬
gun of an antique and dangerous-looking pattern. The
school hall was filled with some three-score workmen,
students and youths, all carrying shot-guns, rifles, pistols
and even blunderbusses. Many of them were lying on the
floor wrapped in their ponchos, great cloaks roughly
formed out of two blankets sewn together at one end,
with a hole for the head, fast asleep, but with their weapons
by their sides. Others were strolling up and down,
ceaselessly rolling cigarettes, and the air was blue with
smoke. Seated at a table in a corner were some young¬
sters loading and unloading their arms with inexpert
hands. I watched the rifle muzzles swing about in
every direction, and decided that it was the most trying
experience of my tiring day among the Reds. At one
end of the room were some Red girls.

They were plump and attractive, two of them very
Spanish with raven black hair and great flashing eyes,
and two of them very blond, so blond that the arts of
the hairdresser had certainly been invoked. The tight-
fitting blue jumper of one of them revealed not only
gracious curves, but a heavy leather belt from which
hung two ammunition pouches and a long, ugly, black
automatic pistol.

“Is that your pistol, senorita?” I asked the girl. “Oh

H

THE RACE FOR THE GUADARRAMA PASSES

no,” was her reply. “It belongs to my Novio.” She then
added with pride, “I could use it, however, if the Fascists
were to attack us here.” She and her companions were
just pretty little dolls with about as much brains, but
later in the campaign I was to come across other Red
militia women of a different calibre and I was to find
proved again the truth that in Revolutions, the bad and
cruel women are ten times as bad as the worst of the
men.

After a long wait, during which several comrades
pressed on me wine and cigarettes which it took me con¬
siderable pains to refuse, I was told by a dirty-looking old
man that the Committee of Public Safety of Iran was
ready to receive me. I was ushered in and found them
seated round a table busily engaged in copying, in a round
and innocent child-like hand, a Red manifesto which they
meant to set up. There were printing machines avail¬
able in the town, but the men had all scattered and it
was impossible to find a single compositor. They ex¬
plained this rather deprecatingly to me. Then, in reply
to my request that I be allowed to take the high road
with my car and travel to Burgos, the grey-haired chair¬
man, backed up by a hatchet-faced young man with red
hair and spectacles, who I later discovered was the secre¬
tary of the Communist Party and a local schoolteacher,
put forward a lengthy explanation for his refusal. AVe
have to protect ourselves against the Fascists who are
attacking us,” he said. “We have had to make many
prisoners and to shoot many of them, and we cannot
allow you, whom we do not know, to travel through our
lines, see what we are doing and where our forces are,
and then go on to Burgos. You might be carrying
messages for them; you might be spying out the ground

25

THE SPANISH WAR

for them. There are only two alternatives: either you
go back to France, or else you will go to prison—and
people do not stay long in prison these days.”

I felt that argument was not much good, and I had
already begun to realise, when I saw the assembly of young
and old revolutionaries, with their fierce, grimy, unshaved
faces, their motley uniforms and their collection of arms,
some extremely modern like the sub-machine-guns and
the parabellum automatics, down to old fowling-pieces at
least a century old, and the great Spanish navaja or knife
with its curved blade at least three inches wide in the
middle and a full eight inches long, that Spain was not
faced with merely a coup d?Hat, but with a civil war which
might last months. So I left the Committee of Public
Safety dipping its pens in the ink and painstakingly
pursuing its task of copying inflammatory prose, and
drove back to France.

It was vitally necessary for me to get across to Burgos,
however, and so, late though it was, I decided to try one
or more of the passes through the hills into Navarre until
I found one through which I could obtain admittance.
It was a long and disheartening task. Everywhere I
went the frontier was closed. At places the French gen¬
darmes and mobile guard, misinterpreting instructions,
turned me back; at other places the Spanish carabineros,
or else the Civil Guards, in their strange cocked hats,
refused me passage. It was all the more aggravating as
I could see the scarlet berets of Carlist friends only a few
hundred yards away, and knew that I had reached Nation¬
alist territory. At midnight I was in the picturesque
French frontier town of St. Jean Pied de Port, and there
found Nationalist sympathisers who offered to show me
another pass, seldom used and most likely not guarded,

26

THE RACE FOR THE GUADARRAMA PASSES

through which I might make my way down into the
Baztan valley. At six in the morning we were off
through St Etienne de Baigorre, and by one of the worst
and most hair-raising mountain roads that I have ever
taken, we slowly crossed into Spain. It was right that
there were no Spanish guards on the heights, but we found
them when we ran down into the valley below. They
began by being astonished, and then they were alarmed.
After immense argument I was able to prevail on them to
send for their captain. At first, they had said that he
was asleep and could not be awakened at such an early
hour—it was just nine o’clock. He arrived, a huge man
in creased pyjamas of a doubtful, faded blue. Never had
I seen such a mop of curly black hair. It stood out on
all sides of his head at least six to seven inches. His
pyjama jacket was open and his torso was also thickly
covered with hair in black ringlets. Add to all this, thick
lips and a huge, flattened nose, and the picture was more
that of some gigantic man from prehistoric days than
merely a peaceful Customs officer. He looked terrifying,
and he had a deep booming voice, but he proved extremely
a mia bly allowed my car to pass, told the Civil Guards to
mind their own business and leave all questions of papers
to the authorities at Pampeluna, and then, after offering
me some coffee which, with an eye on the doubtful
cleanliness of all my surroundings, I prudently refused—
I became less particular later—he bade me farewell and a
good journey on my road to the capital of Navarre.

It was the first time that I took that enchanting road
through the green Baztan valley with its frequent
streams and its beautiful barrier of purple mountains,
though within the next few weeks I travelled through
it both by night and day over a score of times. First

27

THE SPANISH WAR

comes the Otsondo pass, only 2,400 feet high but bare and
bleak, and then down into the valley to Elisondo. This
little town, which was a base for military operations
in the direction of Vera and Enderlarza against Iran,
has some claim to be known in history. For a long time
it was the capital of the tiny Baztan republic which
only disappeared in the seventeenth century. Prosper
Merimee chose it as the scene for his Carmen, and
during the final phases of the Peninsular War British
troops were garrisoned there, and it frequently saw
Wellington, whose headquarters were only a few miles
distant.

From Elisondo the road took me over the Velate pass
and thence to the walls of Pampeluna. The sun was
high in the heavens, and it was one of the hottest days I
can remember. At every village and cross-roads my car
was stopped either by Civil Guards or by peasants wearing
the scarlet beret of the Requetes or Carlists. They were
mostly sympathetic and friendly, eager to hear from abroad
what was happening in their own country, confessing
that they themselves knew nothing, except that they had
taken up arms to fight for their religion and their country
against the pagan Reds of Madrid and Moscow. In one
village the guards had at their head their rcd-faced,
white-haired old farochio, or vicar, who came forward
when my car was stopped and questioned me in detail as
to my journey. When he heard that I was an English
journalist he apologised for his “needless suspicions,”
saying, “We have already stopped two cars containing
Reds with their pockets full of dynamite cartridges, and
have sent them under guard to the military authorities
at Pampeluna.”

On the top of the Velate pass there are barely half a

28

THE RACE FOR THE GUADARRAMA PASSES

dozen houses. I came to know all their inhabitants quite
well. There was an Italian who kept the little hotel and
who, having been to the United States, spoke English
fluently, and there were half a dozen carabineros or
Customs officers under the command of a grizzled but
amiable sergeant. They had little news on their moun¬
tain-top, and during the two months that I used the pass,
often twice a day, I brought them cigarettes and news¬
papers. When the day came that Irun had fallen and
that I could take the direct route to France, I felt the
regret of losing an old friend, realising that I would not
again cross those picturesque mountains of Navarre nor
see the pleasant pastures of the Baztan valley, and that
I would miss the honest smile and courteous greetings
of that simple sergeant of Spanish Customs on the Velate
road.

Pampeluna is only some fifty miles from the frontier, but
the road is slow owing to the steepness of the gradients
and the scores of hairpin curves, and with our numerous
stops it was nearly noon when we drew up in the great
square on the right-hand corner in front of the Hotel
Perla, which was to be for so long the busy headquarters
of the Press in Navarre.

The square itself was a sea of scarlet and blue. On the
one hand were the red berets of the Carlists, and on the
other the blue forage cap of the members of the Falange
or Spanish Nationalist Party. All the young men were
armed with rifle or pistol, but their weapons were clean
and new and there was an air of voluntarily accepted
discipline about them all which had been lacking in the
Red militia I had seen the day before. v

With the vague idea that it was the right thing to do
I went to the nearest police station to report my arrival.

29

THE SPANISH WAR

comes the Otsondo pass, only 2,400 feet high but bare and
bleak, and then down into the valley to Elisondo. This
little town, which was a base for military operations
in the direction of Vera and Enderlarza against Irun,
has some claim to be known in history. For a long time
it was the capital of the tiny Baztan republic which
only disappeared in the seventeenth century. Prosper
Merimee chose it as the scene for his Carmen, and
during the final phases of the Peninsular War British
troops were garrisoned there, and it frequently saw
Wellington, whose headquarters were only a few miles
distant.

From Elisondo the road took me over the Velate pass
and thence to the walls of Pampeluna. The sun was
high in the heavens, and it was one of the hottest days I
can remember. At every village and cross-roads my car
was stopped either by Civil Guards or by peasants wearing
the scarlet beret of the Requetes or Carlists. They were
mostly sympathetic and friendly, eager to hear from abroad
what was happening in their own country, confessing
that they themselves knew nothing, except that they had
taken up arms to fight for their religion and their country
against the pagan Reds of Madrid and Moscow. In one
village the guards had at their head their red-faced,
white-haired old farochio, or vicar, who came forward
when my car was stopped and questioned me in detail as
to my journey. When he heard that I was an English
journalist he apologised for his “needless suspicions,”
saying, “We have already stopped two cars containing
Reds with their pockets full of dynamite cartridges, and
have sent them under guard to the military authorities
at Pampeluna.”

On the top of the Velate pass there are barely half a

28

THE RACE FOR THE GUADARRAMA PASSES

dozen Louses. I came to know all their inhabitants quite
well. There was an Italian who kept the little hotel and
who, having been to the United States, spoke. Englis
fluently, and there were half a dozen carabineros or
Customs officers under the command of a grizzled but
amiable sergeant. They had little news on their moun¬
tain-top, and during the two months that I used the pass,
often twice a day, I brought them cigarettes and news¬
papers. When the day came that Iran had fallen and
that I could take the direct route to France, I felt the
regret of losing an old friend, realising that I would not
again cross those picturesque mountains of Navarre nor
see the pleasant pastures of the Baztan valley, and that
I would miss the honest smile and courteous greetings
of that simple sergeant of Spanish Customs on the Velate
road.

Pampeluna is only some fifty miles from the frontier, but
the road is slow owing to the steepness of the gradients
and the scores of hairpin curves, and with our numerous
stops it was nearly noon when we drew up in the great
square on the right-hand corner in front of the Hotel
Perla, which was to be for so long the busy headquarters
of the Press in Navarre.

The square itself was a sea of scarlet and blue. On the
one hand were the red berets of the Carlists, and on the
other the blue forage cap of the members of the Falange
or Spanish Nationalist Party. All the young men were
armed with rifle or pistol, but their weapons were clean
and new and there was an air of voluntarily accepted
discipline about them all which had been lacking in the
Red militia I had seen the day before.

With the vague idea that it was the right thing to do
I went to the nearest police station to report my arrival.

29

THE SPANISH WAR

I found it full of a motley crowd composed half oi
peasants and half of townspeople, and it was some minutes
before I could make my errand known. I found that my
presence caused no surprise, and I was merely told that
if I stayed in the town over three days I ought to present
myself again for the necessary authorisation. Next 1
called on the military headquarters, where my reception
was not quite so cordial. Those I saw professed not to
understand the reason for my presence, and gravely told
me that no pass or permit could be given me unless I
could bring forward two Carlists who would vouch for
me. That was difficult, because for every name I gave
them the reply was either “He is not a Carlist,” or “He
is not known in Pampeluna.” I abandoned my attempt
to satisfy them for the time being and said that 1 would
return after luncheon. It was a wise decision, for in the
crowded restaurant I recognised a Spanish journalist I
had met three years before in Madrid, and an hour later
I had the little slip of paper that I needed.

At the same time I gathered a great deal of valuable
information. First I received news which determined
my course of action for the next few days. I learnt that
the mili tary actions which were to take place were in the
nature of a race between Nationalists and Reds for the
control of the mountain passes north of Madrid, debouch¬
ing into Aragon and Old Castile. With the exception
of the Asturias, Bilbao, and the Basque country, all the
west and north of Spain were Nationalist, and the Reds
from Barcelona and Madrid would naturally try to send
expeditions both north and west with the object of
crushing the military movement in its main strongholds.

Secondly, I realised for the first time the strength of
the National movement which was behind the generals

3 °

THE RACE FOR THE GXJADARRAMA PASSES

in the rising, and which, linked to them all the forces of
law and order in the country. I was fortunate enough
to meet that very day over coffee, accompanied by half a
dozen of his lieutenants, the head of the Carlist move¬
ment, Senor Fal Conde.

Historically the Carlists are the followers of Don
Carlos who rose in arms just a century ago to try to
impose him as legitimate and absolute monarch in Spain
in the place of his niece Isabel. They were also the
heroes of the second Carlist war of 1875 when, again, they
were beaten after a fight which for bloodshed and bitter
ferocity rivalled the first. Since then the Carlist creed,
which seemed so strangely idealist and out of date in the
twentieth century—a creed of faith, of family traditions,
and of unfailing loyalty to a lost cause—appeared to be
dying out. Carlist songs were still sung in the low-roofed
farmhouse kitchens of Navarre, certain Carlist die-hards
still refused to recognise Alfonso XIII, but it was said
everywhere that their power had gone for ever. The
rigours and the anti-religious laws of the 1931 Republic
had, however, fanned those dying embers, and throughout
Navarre and the centre of Spain the Carlist faith was
burning once more bright and clear. An immense effort
was made by their leaders to secure arms and equipment,
and, knowing that there would be a life and death struggle
against the Reds, Senor Fal Conde and the other leaders
of the old faith and the century-old party met their rivals
of the Falange and other Spanish political creeds and took
a solemn oath that they would all of them lay aside all
thought of party, and serve only Spain during the period
necessary to loose the strangle-hold of the Reds and
restore religion, law and order throughout the country.

Senor Fal Conde, whom I met at this historic moment

31

2

THE SPANISH WAR

when the volunteer force that he had been preparing
during five years was actually taking the fields
is a dark and somewhat melancholy “faced man of middle
stature, with most expressive eyes. He greeted me
enthusiastically as he said that he realised the necessity
for the real facts of the case to be made known through

Press so as to sway world opinion. X have met him
several times since, and indeed, two months later at
Burgos he paid me the signal honour of admitting me as
an honorary foreign member of the Carlist Party, giving
me a scarlet beret'of honour. “I do not forget,” he said,
“that I am a journalist too, and I know the value of the
Press. During the first forty-eight hours of the move¬
ment we placed 20,000 young men, fully armed and
equipped, at the disposal of General Mola, and we are
raising other forces as fast as we can get arms for them.

“We Carlists, who stand for the old traditions,” he
went on, “have made great but willing sacrifices. We
have abandoned for the time being our idea of the restora¬
tion of an absolute monarchy, but on the strict under¬
standing that this movement is not to favour one or other
of the different political parties, but is to establish an
authoritative government.

“Moscow tried to instil Marxism and Communism
in Spain so that the disease might spread to all other
countries. We are going to drive it out of Spain. That
is why we need an authoritative government. W r hen
we destroy the Common Front government we will first
save Spain and then all Europe from the deadly contagion
of Bolshevism.”

The news that the fiercest fighting for the moment
would be * on the semicircular ring of mountains, known
as the Guadarrama range, which lies north and west of

32

THE RACE FOR THE GUADARRAMA PASSES

Madrid, made it essential that I should make my way
south as fast as possible. Therefore after a hurried dash
back to France to send off my first dispatches and to
arrange for couriers with speedy cars for the carrying of
further messages, I once more passed through the Baztan
valley, and this time, not stopping at Pampeluna, I pressed
direct south. I had a French car then and a French driver
named Antoine who remained in my service for two
months, until, in fact, the car, which had met with several
accidents, was completely unserviceable. He was a cheer¬
ful and reliable man, an excellent driver, and spoke a little
Spanish, so that he was often useful in collecting informa¬
tion for me from other chauffeurs. He took nearly as
much interest as I did in moving about speedily and
getting my dispatches back fast, and looked on all that
part of our mission as a glorious and exciting game.

The first place we struck of importance was Soria,
which stands some forty miles north of the mountain
barrier. It had only just been captured from local Reds
a few hours before, and a motor column of some four
hundred lorries, cars and motor omnibuses was still
pouring into it, bringing a few regular troops but mainly
hurriedly formed companies of Carlists and Fascists. It
was one of the handicaps of all the early weeks of the war
that the Republicans had weakened the Army to such an
extent that often a whole regiment was only two hundred
men strong.

For the first time there had been an air raid, and fugi¬
tives on the road miles from the town told me that over
a score had been killed and that the Red Madrid ^planes
were coming back again in an hour or so. I paid little
attention to this as I knew from long experience how
invariably inaccurate is information given by refugees,

33

THE SPANISH WAR

but in the town I found traces of damage. One of the
staff of Colonel Garcia Escamez, who was in command
of the column, told me that one woman had been killed
and two injured. The bombs, he said, were small and
clumsy affairs. Half an hour later I found out that this
was true, for the Red ’planes, three in number, came back
and dropped about a score of light bombs into the mass
of motor traffic congesting the streets, but again doing very
little real damage. I sat down in the middle of the little
park so as to be away from possible splinters and falling
brickwork, and found more alarming than the bombs the
volleys being fired by the excited volunteers. The machine-
guns mounted on lorries joined in the concert, while also
a makeshift anti-aircraft gun sent a few shells whizzing
into the air. It made a great noise, and whether because of
this gun, or whether because they had dropped all their
bombs, the Red ’planes made off. From Soria, using my
motor-car courier service, I was able to send off another
dispatch before moving on to the Somosierra pass in the
Guadarrama, which I learnt was to be attacked by one of
the Nationalist columns now being concentrated. It was
also necessary to leave Soria, for there was no food avail¬
able and I had in my hurry forgotten to look after my
own private commissariat. Antoine had scouted round
and found two small and rather stale rolls with a piece of
raw ham, but could get nothing else.

We hurried off on another long stretch of road through
the Sierras from Soria to Aranda de Duero, to strike the
main Madrid—Irun road. Along that road to Somosierra
Pass, through which Napoleon’s Polish Lancers had once
cut their way, I knew there had already been fighting, and
the pass itself was still in the hands of the Reds. General
Mola’s orders, given that day at Burgos, had been that

34

THE RACE FOR THE GUADARRAMA PASSES

all the passes were to be captured at no matter what cost.
It was essential for the Nationalists to bolt and bar the
doors to Madrid.

On the other side of the mountains, rolling up from
Madrid, were similar columns of motor traction made up
of commercial lorries and country omnibuses, bringing
the Red militia to the attack. They were under the com¬
mand of Colonel Mangada, who was to be the Red leader
in the whole of this Madrid district for many months.
He and his troops have been responsible for the torturing
and murdering of thousands of innocent non-combatants,
both in these mountain villages and farther south along
the Tagus valley in the direction of Badajoz. So brutal
and so systematic were the murders, so complete were
the burnings of churches and convents, that it was per¬
fectly evident that it could only be the result of a carefully
thought-out policy, consistently imposed. The massacres
and crimes, the traces and evidence of which for so many
months I was to find in the whole area covered by the
advance to Madrid, were not only the result of an explosion
of revolutionary hatred. They were also part of a political
plan imposed by Moscow. Soil the hands of as many
as possible of your adherents in blood. Madden them in
any way you like—by alcohol, by incendiary speeches, by
lust or envy—and force them to commit crimes which are
indescribable in their horror. Once the tale of murder,
rape, and arson has been inscribed those men are Red
revolutionaries for ever: they cannot desert; they cannot
surrender, for they cannot plead for mercy. They have
placed themselves outside the pale of humanity, and
therefore they are fit tools for a Communist regime in¬
spired from Moscow. That was the work of Madrid
during all the first weeks of the movement.

3$

THE SPANISH WAR

A column of dust showed me where the troops were
moving, and as we crossed a little stream round which
clustered half a dozen houses, I could see straight ahead of
me the famous pass outlined in the evening sty. Pressing
forward to the front I found that the column had halted
and an advance guard with machine-guns had been
thrown out a couple of thousand yards ahead. Two light
field guns still mounted on their eight-wheel lorries were
trained on the brow of the mountains. On the road,
hugging the right, the lorries and gay-coloured motor
omnibuses were halted, with barely four yards’ interval
between them. I looked at the scene, some two hundred
vehicles on a winding up-gradient packed so closely
together, and wondered what would happen if the Reds
attempted to attack downhill. They did not, and so
the somewhat daring formation was justified. In fact,
throughout the Civil War I have seen the Nationalist
leaders take risks which seemed appalling, but I have
never seen the Reds take advantage of them.

I had presented myself to the major in command of the
advance guard of the column and had found talking to
him some other journalists, including M. Bertrand de
Jouvenel, a young Frenchman whose name is well known
in France as much through his writings as because he is
son of the late Senator de Jouvenel, recently minister and
at one time French Resident-General in Syria and Am¬
bassador in Rome. Night was falling fast and, seated on
a box in front of my car, which I had taken back a hundred
yards or so to the rear, I wrote a hurried dispatch and
decided to send it back to France by Antoine, who was,
incidentally, thoroughly disgusted at the idea of missing
the fight which was due on the morrow. Heartened by
a glass of wine at the cross-road inn, I walked back through
v 36

THE RACE FOR THE GUADARRAMA PASSES

the gathering darkness to where young de Jouvenel had
stayed just behind the outposts, and buttoning up our
coats, for it was growing chilly—we were at an altitude
of nearly 3,600 feet—we sat down on the road bank to
watch for coming events. Night had now completely
fallen; ahead we could distinctly hear the outposts
whispering—they were not yet fully trained men and did
not realise how far the voice carries. Every now and then
a signal lamp flickered uneasily, and a telegraphist in a
little hollow off the road wrote down a message. Behind
in the valley, through which the little stream flows, X can
just see the glow of camp fires, while every now and then
the whinny of a horse from the cavalry lines comes up
with the night wind.

Suddenly high up in the pass, where the road goes
under a tunnel in the rock, there is a great flash of light.
A Red motor-lorry has come over the sky-line, and we can
see its twin headlights. The machine-guns on either side
of me begin to chatter, but really the range is too great,
and only spent bullets could reach the top of the pass.
More effective, one of the field guns takes up the chal-
lenge, and half a dozen shells go roaring towards the
mouth of the pass. The flashes light up the night, then
the two headlights disappear as suddenly as they came,
and after a desultory shot or so all is silent.

Falangist and Royalist militiamen were seated next to
us, and they told us, whiling away the night hours with
their conversation, how when they found that it was
hopeless to try to rise in Madrid itself, they had fought
their way out and along the main road. Without liaison
with the Nationalist leaders or the Army, they knew in¬
stinctively.that the Somosierra pass was a key position,
and, reaching it three days previously, they had tried to

37

THE SPANISH WAR

hold it against the onslaught of Mangada’s Red advance
guards.

The leader of the little group of feverish-eyed survivors
who sat round me in their tattered blue uniforms—
mechanics’ overalls—asked me on no account to mention
his name as his wife and family were still in Madrid. I
have never met him since, and it is likely that he has met
with a soldier’s fate. And his family and children, where
are they now? How often have these terrible questions
to be put in a civil war! “Only ten of us had rifles,” he
told me, “and the rest were armed with automatic pistols
or hand grenades which we made ourselves with dynamite
we took from a marble quarry. We started from Madrid
a hundred strong. Last night we still held the pass but
we were only twenty in number. Our chief, Captain
Carlos Miralles, the famous Royalist leader, was killed in
the last onslaught and with no cartridges left we had to
evacuate our position, carrying the body of our leader
with us. We met Colonel Escamez’s column this morning
anrl now that our pouches are full of cartridges we have
demanded the honour to lead the advance in the morning
as we know the way.”

It was then long past midnight, and with my two com¬
panions I thought it time to snatch as much sleep as the
wretched mosquitoes, which I was surprised to find at
such an altitude, would consent to give. We slumbered
uneasily, but we did sleep, and therefore did not notice
that the unit with which we had had friendly contact had
side-slipped to the right and that fresh troops had been
moved up to take their place. This was unfortunate, as
the result proved.

Hearing a car dash up the road, young de Jouvenel, who
confessed that his military knowledge was not of the best,

38

THE RACE FOR THE GUADARRAMA PASSES

exclaimed: “That must be General Mola.” I expostu¬
lated with him on the improbability of the general in
command of the army inspecting outposts, but he insisted
that he had recognised the General’s car and ran up the
road. We met a cloaked and sleepy-looking officer who
asked us who we were and where we were going, and it
was then we found that he was not our friendly grey¬
haired major, not his chubby-cheeked and charming
captain; in fact, not anybody we knew or had seen before.
Things then moved rapidly. We suddenly found our¬
selves standing in a ring of men, their rifles pointed at us
and their fingers twitching on the triggers. We were
roughly told to put up our hands and were still more
roughly searched for arms. We were flagrantly in the
wrong: it was folly to be in an outpost position and not to
be personally known to the officers in command. Finally,
after a lot of talk de Jouvenel was allowed to lower his
hands and to pull out the personal pass he had, signed by
General Mola. That certainly saved us from being shot
on the spot as spies, but it was not sufficient. “How do
we know that the pass is not forged?” the major asked me
sternly, and I could find no better reply than to show
him mine and to mention the names of the officers we had
been talking to. “That’s all very well,” was his reply,
“but you have no right to be in my lines. I don’t know
you and I will have to send you back to the guard-room
of the picket where the colonel will decide what to do
with you. I only hope for your sakes that your story is
correct.”

And so with three men who to us in the darkness
appeared extremely ferocious we started to march back
down the hill. Bertrand de Jouvenel was furious, though
not perturbed, and started off down the hill at a terrific

39

a'

THE SPANISH WAR

rate. I followed him and whispered a word of warning;
“Don’t go so fast or our guards might think we are trying

to get away . 55

But our guards were apparently just as keen as we were
to get the walk over, for when we slackened our speed
they made signs and shouted, “Tire, tire.” If it had been
French it would have sounded alarming, as it would have
meant “Shoot, shoot.” But in Spanish it only means
IVIove on, and so after a second’s startled reflection we
mended our pace.

We were not received with open arms in the guard-
room, as there was little space and only two deck-chairs,
which de Jouvenel and myself promptly occupied despite
the protests of the corporal of the guard, who before our
arrival had been fast asleep. As compensation for being
robbed of his more comfortable berth he kept loading and
unloading his revolver, with pointed hints, which we
thought out of place, as to what would happen to us at
dawn. But we were not left long in doubt, for an amiable
young cavalry lieutenant came along, and after inspecting
our papers said that they were evidently quite in order,
but that nevertheless he would have to send us back to
Burgos under escort.

When dawn came the sound of heavy guns awoke us,
and we all—prisoners and guards alike—dashed out and
climbed to the road bank to watch our first fight. There
were two batteries of four-inch guns in position; every
minute or so they would fire, and with our glasses we could
see the shells bursting against the grey granite walls of
the pass. I passed my glasses to the friendly lieutenant
for him to look at the scene, and he shouted “They are
falling back.” He was referring to a battalion of Reds
which during the night had been pushed out on both

40

THE RACE FOR THE GUADARRAMA PASSES

sides of the pass. Looking in my turn, I could ses the
men getting up and running back to the pass, while shells
burst among them and little clouds of dust showed where
our machine-gun barrage was at work. It was a slight
affair. Fifty rounds of shells, a few machine-gun bands,
and the whole of the Nationalist advance guard was
pouring forward. A quarter of an hour later, as, depre-
catingly, our young lieutenant showed us a motor-bus
which was taking a fatigue party back to Aranda de
Duero, and suggested that we had better get in and start
our journey back to Burgos, a motor dispatch-rider came
up with the news that the pass had been captured and
that the Reds were retreating to Buitrago in the low
ground on the opposite side. The line was not to move
forward here, as in nearly all the other Guadarrama passes,
more than a few hundred yards or so during all the weary
autumn and winter months, and not until the general
march on Madrid was almost concluded.

I was furious at this contretemps of being sent back
under arrest to General Mola’s headquarters, as I knew
that I would miss my rendezvous with Antoine and my
French car, and I wondered what he would do without
any proper passes in the middle of Spain. I knew also
that there was fighting to be done for the other passes,
and I was afraid of being late with the news. At Aranda,
which we reached feeling very tired, cross, and dirty, we
found our young cavalry friend, who had also turned up
in a surprising fashion, and I realised that though so
amicable he had not completely accepted our story at its
face value, and that we were under his special surveillance
besides having an armed Falangist guard.

Finally, things turned out quite well. With the officer’s
aid, I was able to secure a dilapidated but fast-travelling

41

THE SPANISH WAR

taxicab in Aranda, and we shot off to Burgos at better
speed, to find General Mola half apologetic and half
scolding. I thanked him for his excuses, admitted his
reasons for scolding us, and asked eagerly that his staff
should give us news of what was happening. Before doing
this, however, he solemnly dismissed our guard.

SKETCH MAP SHOWING POSITION OF THE ALTO DE LEON PASS

I then heard the story, one of the epics of the Civil War,
of the capture of the Guadarrama pass, also known as
that of the Alto de Leon, by General Serrador. In later
ays got to know this officer well and saw him several
times at his divisional headquarters at Villacastin in the
old country house of Federico Madrazo, a well-known
Spanish painter. Sturdy in build, with a flourishing iron-
grey moustache and a weather-tanned face, he is a typical
Spanish officer. Strongly Nationalist in his views, he was
ne o that little band of political prisoners exiled to Villa

42

the Race eor the guadarraMa passes

Cisneros in Spanish West Africa, who toot the heroic
resolution to escape, and who managed to. mate their way
to Lisbon in a tiny lobster boat, with scanty provisions
and hardly any water. He was prominent in the secret
staff wort which preceded the military rising, and was
given the command of the column of infantry and militia
which was to capture this pass and prevent the Reds
under Mangada from advancing along the roads to Avila
and Burgos and, especially, along the Corunna road,
which is the tey to the heart of Old Castile.

Moving off with eight hundred lorries and motor
vehicles, carrying a hastily mobilised force of artillery and
infantry, he fought his way past the Red advance posts
outside Villacastin and at the little town of Venta San
Rafael, at the foot of the pass where the road crosses the
mountain range, past the pedestal with the Lion of the
Kingdom of Leon, at an altitude of 4,500 feet.

The Reds were stationed in force at the top of the
mountain, with artillery and machine-guns, and from
Venta San Rafael the road winds up and up in a series of
hairpin turns. General Serrador decided that the only
tactics to adopt were rush tactics, and that were he to
disembark his men and send them up the mountain
road on foot, they would never get there. So, echeloning
his motor-lorries while he sent cavalry from the historic
Farnese Regiment to make a detour and guard his flanks,
he rushed his motor transport up the road. Shells and
machine-gun fire began to rain down. The General himself
drove in an open car, so that he could effectively command
the whole column. Lorry aft er lorry was put out of action
and men killed and wounded. Those who were uninjured
were ordered to pile into the nearest moving vehicle, to
hang on somehow or other, but to keep going. And those

43

THE SPANISH WAR

untrained volunteers, fired by their patriotism and fervour,
kept going. Bp the time the lorries reached the point
where it had been settled they were to stop, more than
half had been put out of action. But General Serrador
and his staff were at their head, and now on foot and
in open order they all started scrambling up the rocks and
through the pine trees to the little rocky plateau which
marks the head of the pass. I visited the spot only a few
days later, when the dead bodies of Reds and Patriots alike
were still strewn everywhere, and when the wrecked
and burnt-out skeletons of motor omnibuses and lorries
littered the sides of the road.

It was almost impossible to believe the evidence before
one’s eyes that these men had managed to storm such
heights in the face of the enemy fire. But they did so,
and when, with bayonets fixed, the first breathless
platoons arrived at the top, with their grey-headed
general in the front rank, the Reds broke and ran in con¬
fusion down the hill-side on to the first slopes of the
plateau stretching to Madrid. Another door through
which the Reds had hoped to pour had been banged and
bolted. It remained, however, a very unhealthy spot;
for the Reds, with vain hopes of winning back the height
they had been unable to keep, pestered its garrison with
artillery fire and daily aeroplane bombing.

When I visited the pass with a number of jour nalis ts
conducted by Captain Aguilera, our Press officer, the Reds
were just trying to capture Venta San Rafael at the foot
of the pass by a twin turning movement on both flanks
calculated to cut off the gallant garrison on the hill. We
watched the fight from the village for some time, seeing
the prisoners being brought in—roughly sixty or so—and
then with our officer guide pushed to the top. From

44

THE RACE FOR THE GUADARRAMA PASSES

there we were able to see Madrid gleaming white in the
distance. Machine-gun bullets were cutting the brush¬
wood about us, and just when we were starting back
for our cars, left on one of the bends of the road below,
the Red ’planes arrived and we had to take shelter as they
dropped bomb after bomb. Finally we ran to our cars
and got off, and then two of them followed us with
their machine-guns, flying very low and shooting down
the road. I tried at first to dash ahead, thinking that after
the first burst of machine-gun fire they would give up
the chase.

I had with me in my car a very gahant little American
girl, Miss Frances Davis, who was acting as courier and
correspondent for the Daily Mail . She showed no fear,
not even when I told Antoine, the chauffeur, to jam on
the brakes and stop, at a moment when we were travelling
at some sixty miles an hour. The car side-slipped across
the road, the cushions slid from their places, and two
bottles of beer rolled from a basket, pouring their contents
over us as we opened the doors and, jumping out, took
shelter in the fields on the right of the road. One of the
Red ’planes, a small one of the Moth type, was then only
some three hundred feet up, but it could not fire through
the propeller and had to side-slip on one wing every time
it tried to get its machine-gun to bear. It did so twice
again as we stood in the field motionless and hidden from
view in the shadow of rocks, and then, giving up the chase
as a bad job, it flew off. We had further emotions, how¬
ever, for when we reached Villacastin, some miles in the
rear, the Red ’planes returned and bombed us soundly
again. We were lucky not to be touched, but there were
over a score of casualties among the soldiers. Miss Davis
behaved with exemplary coolness, taking it all for granted,

45

THE SPANISH WAR

and when she got back to the frontier she was able to
write a brilliant dispatch relating her experiences.

Before this visit to the Guadarrama pass I had made a
very long detour eastwards to approach Madrid from the
north-east along the Saragossa road. At Burgos I had
heard that the Reds were boasting they would capture
Saragossa within a day or so and would open up direct rail
and road communication between Barcelona and Madrid.
I knew by then that the central and western passes had
been closed, and if the road north-east were also to be
blocked it would mean that the Reds had lost their chance
of overrunning the Nationalist territory and reaching
General Mola’s capital at Burgos, their final objective, if
they were still hoping to suppress the movement by force
of arms.

The journey to Saragossa was long and uneventful.
Antoine and myself were by now accustomed to being
stopped by Civil Guards and armed peasants with the
national colours of red and gold either pinned to their
coats or worn as an armlet, and with my pass from Burgos
we were seldom long delayed. At Saragossa I found at
the hotel an American professor and his wife who were
scared out of their wits, and was able to reassure them and
to give them good advice as to how they could get out
of the country by going to Pampeluna. In the villages
round Saragossa I had noticed a number of surly faces,
and it was evident that some Reds at least were to be
found behind the lines. I was told afterwards that most
of them made off under cover of darkness, and that the
others, seeing that the Nationalists were winning, came
over heart and soul to the Patriot side. At Saragossa they
were extremely optimistic, and I was given a pass taking
me to Guadalajara. I did not get there, as the place was

THE RACE FOR THE GUADARRAMA PASSES

still in the hands of the Reds, but I had plenty of adven¬
ture on the wap. We were by this time a small caravan,
as I had been joined again by M. de Jouvenel and also
by two American correspondents. We were told we had
been preceded just twenty-four hours before by a mobile
column which had for its task to secure the road and bar
the way to any Red advance from Madrid. We found
tracesjofjdie movements of this column all along the road.
Ihe Reds had in places tried to hold up its progress by
hooting from the houses, but the Nationalists had stormed
their way through, hardly stopping an hour anywhere.

Night was falling when we passed through Ateca, and
as many of the villagers appeared as sullen as some of those
near Saragossa, I decided that we had better stop at the
next place which offered us good accommodation for the
night. The other members of the little caravan agreed
to throw in their lot with me and to rely on my experience
of Spain in time of trouble, and so when we reached
Alhama de Aragon we ordered our chauffeurs to draw up
at the best hotel. We were favoured by luck, for none of
us knew the road and its possibilities. Alh a ma is a well-
known watering place with sulphur and other medicinal
baths and a fine hotel. All of us enjoyed a hot bath—the
first for many days—and then we sat down to a dinner
served on white linen by a waiter in full uniform. It was
a welcome surprise.

I had another surprise an hour later as the waiter
brought me a card asking if I would take coffee with a
Monsieur M. Martin, a professor of Spanish in Paris whom
I had often met and who said he was travelling with
an English doctor. I found them in complete ignorance
of what was taking place; my fellow-countryman was
especially pleased with the bundle of different English

47

THE SPANISH WAR

papers I was able to give him, and also with the advice I
proffered as to their best way to return to France. The
doctor had wished to be back in London several days
before, for urgent personal reasons, but had not felt it
safe to venture out in a countryside when he did not
know what had taken place. I told the little party—they
were four in number—that they could travel quite safely
by day at least, to Saragossa, and that there they could
go either to Pampeluna or to Canfranc on the Franco-
Spanish frontier by train.

After another wonderful bath next morning we all
started out again down the Guadalajara road. Watching
our maps closely, our cars shot on past Arcos and the
curious round hill of Medinaceli with its old castle walls,
when we suddenly found a barricade of neatly felled trees
across the road. It looked a dangerous spot, and so we
turned back to the nearest cross-roads where a sentry post
told us that the local commander was on top of the hill.
We had just reached the plateau and the Parador, or small
local hotel, and presented ourselves to the major in com¬
mand, when there was a jangling of church bells, and
before we knew what had happened that officer and his
staff bundled us back into our cars, and with a soldier
standing on the footboard and ourselves half in and half
out, we shot along the tiny cobbled village street under
the archway of the castle.

Red ’planes again. We stood in a small stone corridor
sheltered by the twelve-foot thick masonry of the old
castle of the Dukes of Medinaceli, while we made better
acquaintance with our hosts in the flickering light of a
couple of tallow dips.

Major Palacios presented himself to us when we had
shown our various passes and told him who we were. It

48

THE RACE FOR THE GtJADARRAMA PASSES

was he who was in command of the mobile column, and he
had just reached Medinaceli the night before, and with
his field guns, mortars and machine-guns had beaten off
the Reds and had destroyed finally all hopes they had of
reaching Saragossa and linking up Madrid with Barcelona,
ihey had felt certain of success and, not knowing there
was a column advancing to meet them, had sent ahead
three motor-cars filled with Red agitators who were to
purchase the adherence of any disaffected men in the
Saragossa garrison and start a rising. Their cars were
filled with dynamite and automatic pistols as well as with
a quantity of Red literature.

There were several air raids that morning, and in the
intervals, seated in the only cafe the little medieval town
possessed, we all wrote our dispatches. I was fated to
remain at Medinaceli for four days, as my car, which had
gone out with my telegrams, was held up somehow,
Antoine for once having failed to obtain a return pass.
During that time I got to know our gallant host Major
Palacios and his staff very well, and also to realise the
generous hospitality of the Spanish soldier. We shared
their food and we shared their hard couches on the stone
flags of the castle or the floor of the smoky little cafe. We
were able to buy shepherds’ blankets, warm and envelop¬
ing, so we were not so much to be pitied. The one thing
I found difficult to get used to was the amount of oil and
garlic in every dish.

Major Palacios told me how he had been in Madrid
when the movement began, and though on the reserve
list, immediately started for his garrison town of Saragossa.

At Guadalajara,” he said, “the train stopped, and when I
went along to find out what had happened, I was told that
a general strike had been proclaimed and that the train

49

THE SPANISH WAR

would go no farther. I saw that the signals were in our
favour and that the driver and stoker were still in the
engine cab, so I pulled myself up next to them, and taking
my revolver from my pocket—I was in mufti at the time
—I shoved it in the small of the driver’s back and told
him and the stoker not to say a word unless they wished
to be shot, but to open the regulator and move off as fast
as possible. Both men did what they were told. The
Red militia saw us going, and at first did not know what
had happened. We were getting up speed every minute
as they ran alongside the train waving their rifles. One
man armed with an automatic climbed on to the foot¬
plate, but I kicked him under the jaw and he fell with a
thud on to the platform. When we got to Calatayud I
asked the driver and stoker if they were w illin g to drive
on without further threats, and they both said they were
not Reds at heart and were willing to throw in their lot
with us. When I got to Saragossa, I was told that it
would be my task to hold the Guadalajara road, and as
soon as I could get my column together, I came down to
this point where I knew I could hold the road against any¬
thing up to ten thousand men.”

I went out on several raids and reconnoitring parties
that Major Palacios had organised, but as I saw that he
held all the countryside I felt it necessary to get back
speedily to the centre of things.

With a special pass and plenty of good wishes in the
shape of the Spanish farewell, “Va usted con Dios,” I left
and, by the old familiar game of “lorry-jumping,” which
everybody learnt during the Great War, I managed to
reach Soria and then got a car back to Burgos. I had
made a point of always travelling light, and had nothing
with me except my typewriter and a small case in which

50

THE RACE FOR THE GUADARRAMA PASSES

1 packed, besides my paper and maps, a couple of pairs of
heavy socks, a clean shirt, razor, comb, soap and tooth¬
brush, All my other belongings were scattered here and
there about the country, and many of them will always
remain so, as it would hardly be economic to tour hun¬
dreds of miles of small villages to pick up here a pullover
and there a pair of flannel bags or a spare pair of shoes.

SI

Ill

THE MOVEMENT IN THE SOUTH:
BADAJOZ, AUGUST 14

G ENERAL FRANCO, neglecting the minor fronts
scattered here and there in the sierras of Andalusia
and the Estremadura, had been concentrating during these
days on his part of the task that lay before the Nationalist
leaders; namely, assembling his expeditionary force
from Africa and marching up the Guadiana valley to turn
half right at Caceres and then along the Tagus valley
towards Toledo and Madrid. It was the passage of in¬
vaders since all time, as the mountains which rise between
Seville and Toledo, on the direct road as the crow flies,
■ prohibit military activity.

Naturally, I, at that time, had only a clouded percep¬
tion of what was taking place, but as I had obtained a good
view of the situation in the north it seemed to me that my
next best move would be southwards to see what General
Franco’s army was doing. I had found General Mola’s
patriot forces with their trained officers and their national
fervour superior to the Reds. It seemed to me that in the
long run, given a fair share of luck, good leadership,
and the spirit of confidence which animated the troops
from Navarre, the forces of law and order should defeat
those of revolution coupled with crime. It was my duty
to form an opinion as to the ultimate outcome of the war,
which, through the columns of the Daily Mail, should be
made known to the British public. But I felt reluctant
to make any definite statement until I knew what was

THE MOVEMENT IN THE SOUTH

going on in the south of Spain 5 and so I asked for passes
which would enable me to go to Seville and see General
Queipo de Llano in command there.

General Mola immediately acceded to my request, and
it was with a special pass from him that I started on my
eight-hundred-mile dash south. It was necessary to travel
by way of Lisbon, as Red forces still held Merida and
Badajoz—they were to be driven out a few days later,
and I was lucky enough to be back in time to see the
fighting which thus hnked up the southern and northern
Patriot armies. The first few days of August 1936 were
phenomenally hot, and my journey was extremely tiring.
I had started from Salamanca about nine in the morning,
and. when I got to Ciudad Rodrigo and the frontier I
realised that there had been little improvement since the
days of Wellington in the roads from the Portuguese
frontier to the Atlantic coast. In parts they were hardly
better than cart tracks, and it was- often impossible to go
faster than fifteen miles an hour, and that at the cost of
terrible bumping. After Coimbra the road got much
better and became a good motor road. It was cooler at
nightfall and, though it was getting very late and we had
covered a considerable distance, with the agreement of
Antoine, I determined to make Lisbon before stopping
for the night. . 6

It was a picturesque moonlit night, and the road which
took us through the famous fines of Torres Vedras had
just sufficient twists and climbs not to be monotonous.
There were, outside the villages, girls dancing by the road¬
side. They danced alone, tall and graceful in their long
clinging frocks and their gay-coloured head scarves.
Straight-backed and lissom, carrying their heads like
princesses, it was a fairy scene. All we could guess of

53

THE SPANISH WAR

their swains was a low crooning accompanied by a rhythmic
beating of the hands which showed that the young men had
to be content with the role of a very subdued orchestra.

Lisbon is an entrancing city, but I arrived only just in
time to eat a hurried supper in a night cafe with Antoine,
write a note to my friend of the Eastern Telegraph to
warn him that I would be sending him a long dispatch to
transmit to London, and then to bed in view of an early
start. We took the first ferry boat in the morning and
then set off on the long journey to the mouth of the
Guadiana river in the distant south. The sun beat down
on us with tropical intensity, and the car was not running
at its best. At four o’clock in the afternoon we reached
Villa Real de San Antonio on the Gulf of Cadiz, where
the white sands of the shore were dotted here and there
with bathing cabins, and where white-walled villas with
green shutters closely fastened stood in the tamarisks just
a bare fifty yards from the rollers of the Atlantic.

The Guadiana here is very broad, and when the tide
rises there is a decided rip in the current. There is no
regular ferry, and my car was run on a flat-bottomed barge
over two planks placed broadwise, and there, with front
wheels and back wheels projecting on either side, it was
precariously secured by ropes. The barge was to be
tugged across by a small motor-boat. I took my place in
this latter, but Antoine, who was not at all reassured as to
the fate of the car, insisted on going in the barge. I asked
him whether he meant to plunge in and drag the car
ashore if there was an accident, but he did not see the joke
and merely replied, “My place is with my car.” We had
no accident and were soon ashore, and after the usual
protracted Customs formalities started off again on the
Huelva-Seville road.

54

THE MOVEMENT IN THE SOUTH

Everywhere there were signs of recent fighting, and in
the villages and towns the burnt churches and sacked
houses showed that the Reds had passed there, and had
been defeated only after they had taken their usual toll
of lives and had committed their customary crimes. In
each village now, however, there were Civil Guards and
Fascist volunteers, and, again at each cross-roads, I had to
stop and show my credentials. It was even hotter than
it had been on the road in Portugal, and each time we had
to overtake a column of military lorries we were almost
blinded by the dense clouds of white dust.

Finally, the towers and spires of Seville showed rose-
coloured in the evening sky, and my long journey was over.

General Queipo de Llano received me the moment I
presented my credentials and, with that complete frank¬
ness which by now I was accustomed to expect, he told
me the tale of the early days of the rising in Seville which
I have already related. The General was wearing a restful
mufti suit of white tussore—the usual wear of a Spanish
gentleman in the south. There were two things that he
said which struck me most, for they were proffered without
hesitation, and at that time they answered two very
important questions. The first was as follows; “l am not
in this movement for any motive of personal ambition.
I will maintain myself in the south, and I accept with
willing discipline the fact that the government of the
country as a whole has been put in the hands of Generals
Franco and Mola, both of whom are men I admire. I
well remember that more than ten years ago the French
Marshal Lyautey told me there were two soldiers who
would make the world resound with their names. The
first was General Graziani and the second was General
Franco,” ■

55

injts srAJNISH WAR

His second statement was to define the Nationalist
attitude to the captured Red militiamen. “Except in the
heat of battle or in the capture by assault of a position,”
he said, “no men are shot down without being given a
hearing and a fair trial in strict accordance with the rule
of procedure of our military courts. I never bring any
pressure to bear on the officers who compose these courts
martial in one way or another. The trials are held in
public, and those only are condemned to death who have
personally taken part in murders and other crimes
punishable according to our military code by death, or
who by their position of authority are responsible 5 for
having allowed such crimes to be committed. I have
taken thousands of prisoners, and to-day more than half
of them are at liberty.”

General Queipo de Llano had already adopted his cus¬
tom of making a nightly broadcast speech to the Spanish
people, and there is no doubt but that his cheerful
optimism, his bluff military manner, and his typical
Spanish humour—sometimes somewhat broad, but under¬
stood by peasant and town worker alike—had an enormous
influence in these very early days of the movement. I
saw him that night making his speech, poking fun at the
Red leaders and ridiculing their statements. He sat on
the arm of his chair in his office, with his staff standing
near him, and spoke with only the aid of a few notes.
Occasionally he would stop for a moment and question
one of his officers for the confirmation of a figure or a
name, and there was no doubt that he had adopted quite
unconsciously the best broadcasting technique.

I was given confidentially figures as to the strength
of the African expeditionary force which was already
moving northwards on the long road to Madrid, its

56

THE MOVEMENT IN THE SOUTH

regiments, its guns, and its objectives. I was enabled to
see some of the battalions, the finest units in the Spanish
Army, and so, when I sat down after a hurried forty-eight
hours of inspection and of conferences with staff officers,
I had made up my mind that, humanly speaking, there
was no doubt but that General Franco and the National¬
ists would sooner or later defeat the Madrid Reds. I have
a slight personal knowledge of military affairs, and I saw
that Franco had fighting for him men who were disci¬
plined and who had an ideal. His African troops were not
only well in hand, but they possessed a very high level of
fighting ability. The volunteer militia units were, natur¬
ally, not so well trained, but their keenness was such that
it was evident they would gain those other military
qualities in the course of the campaign. At that moment
the Russian and other international Red brigades had not
been constituted; they were only being talked about
vaguely. It was already obvious, however, that when
they did appear on the field, they could only delay the
ultimate victory of the Nationalists and could not change
the final issue.

It was in this month of August that Spain’s National
army was being formed. Young men were marching to
exercise, were standing at the rifle butts or were kneeling
round a machine-gun, all over Nationalist Spain. Some
of them in khaki with a khaki forage cap with green or
scarlet tassel hanging over the forehead—these were men
belonging to the classes of conscripts being called up,
three in August and two later in December. These con¬
scripts were just 200,000 in number, and they were to form
the solid flesh of the skeleton Regular Army which was all
that had been left after five years of republic.

Their discipline was severe, their training hard, and they

57

THE SPANISH WAR

turned out to be very fine soldiers. Companies from the
Regiment of America—a name which is a romantic re¬
minder of the spacious days when Spain held sway over
three-quarters of a continent in the New World—were
equal in valour to the famous Spanish foot of the sixteenth
century. They had no peers in close hand-to-hand
fighting, when it is a case of each man for himself.

Despite this, my favourites were always the volunteer
battalions—the young men of the Requetes or the
Falangists. The first, so gay and dashing with their scarlet
boinas, or berets, rather like the tam-o’-shanter but
without the tassel, worn hanging down over the right ear,
their khaki shirts, wide open on the chest, their buff
equipment, and their white socks neatly rolled round the
ankle over their espargatas , or cord-soled shoes. The
second, in their blue uniforms, looked so workman-like,
and how they sang their Falangist hymn as they marched!
There was much work in those early days, but also much
singing, and “Oriamendi” for the Requetes, the Falangist
hymn, and the “Novio de la Muerte” for the Spanish
Legion, could be heard over the tramp of feet and the
roar of the motor traffic on every road and in every town
square of Nationalist Spain.

The Requetes must have put in the field, mainly in the
north as I have already said, something like 100,000 men,
nearly all of whom were used for active military purposes.
The Falangists had perhaps double that number, but
many of their units were used on lines of communication
and for garrison purposes. Many also were kept in
Majorca to protect that island from further menace and
also to act themselves as a perpetual threat to Barcelona.

None of these troops were completely trained, and yet
most of them had to be used in the front line as necessity

58

THE MOVEMENT IN THE SOUTH

dictated. It was when they were “resting” out of the line
that they got their military training, and many a time have
I heard the exclamations of delight from a company of
Requetes, informed when it “came out” that two machine-
guns were waiting for it. This meant a welcome addition
to the strength of the company, and also something
delightfully new to learn. For that was the spirit of the
Spanish volunteer in 1936.

The ready supply of volunteers, 300,000 in all, within
the first few months of the war, was the best proof that
the Army movement was really a national one. With the
Regular Army that meant some 500,000 young men under
arms in Nationalist territory, which had a population of
some twelve mini ons,

All these considerations, carefully weighed and checked
with all the private information which was at my disposal,
not only as regards the strength of the Patriots and the
powerful material which they would shortly possess, but
as regards the weakness and disorder among the Reds,
enabled me to send a lengthy article to be published in the
Daily Mail on August 10 giving it as my firm opinion that
the victory of General Franco was certain. Never at any
moment during the protracted winter campaign which
followed, nor during the period of hesitancy and un¬
certainty in the early spring, did I feel any doubt as to the
accuracy of my statements. Set-back, I knew, there must
be. You cannot wage war without an enemy, and if you
have an enemy he must occasionally pull something off.

The Reds, by building up new corps of international
volunteers, many of whom were experienced soldiers,
might make the issue more costly and the progress of the
Nationalists slower, but I knew that they could never hold
up the march of the Nationalist regiments for longer than

59

THE SPANISH WAR

a few months on each successive position, and that their
ultimate fate was to be destroyed or driven into the sea.
Besides, it was clear that both sides could have foreign
volunteers, and in this rivalry it was not certain that the
Reds would come off best.

Engine trouble made my return journey to Burgos long
and tiring. In the thousands of miles that I have
travelled so far—by the end of December it was nearly
20,000 miles—it was only on this single occasion that my
car was held up by engine failure, and for this I have to
thank my two chauffeurs, the Frenchman Antoine and his
Spanish successor Juan. The care they took of tyres, car,
and engine, working at them often until late in the night
after a full day of hard driving, was most praiseworthy,
but I must also say that both of them entered into the
spirit of my mission and were on every occasion out to do
their best and help me whenever possible to beat my
rivals. But if they took care of my cars, they could not
avoid accidents—most of them due to the reckless driving
of the big supply lorries, and for weeks on end after some
more than particularly bad accident I would suffer from
car nerves. I felt that I could never sleep in the car, and
any sudden application of the brakes would make me
jump. But it must be remembered that car driving in
Spain in time of civil war is not a restful operation.

In the Basque country, speeding towards Vitoria one
Sunday night just after dusk, coming over a hogsback I
saw to my horror four men zigzagging along the middle
of the road. My chauffeur had his lights on and had
sounded his hooter, but three of them went to the left
of the road while the fourth stayed right in our track.
We were travelling at about sixty miles an hour and there
was no time for reflection. My chauffeur went right into

60

THE MOVEMENT IN THE SOUTH

the ditch, with his brakes screaming, and then the man
ran into us, hitting the fast-travelling car on the right-
hand angle-bracket of the wind-screen. There was a
hideous, hollow crash and he fell in a heap. When the car
stopped, I raced back, but the man was dead. What
followed was like a nightmare. Villagers rushed up from
all over the place, and there were shouts of despair
which quickly changed into menaces for us. Sticks were
raised and fists clenched and my French chauffeur and
myself were in an ugly fix until the village guards with
shotguns turned up to arrest us. They made us put
up our hands, roughly searched us, and then marched us
off to the village lock-up. Our car, which had suffered
badly—all the right wing and running board having been
torn off where we had lumbered through the ditch—was
brought along behind us by a village youth.

I asked loudly for the presence of the Civil Guard, who,
I knew, were alone capable of dealing with the situation,
while outside the villagers shouted for vengeance against
the foreigners who had killed one of theirs. Fortunately,
good deeds have their own reward, and there turned up
the alcalde or mayor of the village who happened to be
a man I had picked up on the road the week before and
taken as far as Pampeluna, where he had business. He
recognised me and took the whole affair in hand. Half
an hour later the Civil Guard appeared and the shouting
crowd was sent at once to the right-about. I called for
witnesses, but the sergeant, a tall man with a long, fair
moustache, said, “Let us look at the road first. If the
accident took place as you say, it will be clearly marked
and we will have no need for witnesses.” We all got into
my car, and this time my chauffeur, reassured, drove us
back to the spot. Our brake marks and the point where

61

THE SPANISH WAR

we had swerved into the ditch were visible, and on our
car the place where the man hit it could also be seen.
The local doctor, who was on the road, vouched for the
fact that our lights were on and that we had hooted, and
the whole case was over. We went back to the village hall,
where the sergeant said, “It was not your fault; the poor
man killed himself.” The village priest was sent for to
draw up an account of what had taken place, which was
couched in perfectly fair language, and once we had signed
it we were at liberty to proceed.

This incident heightened my existing admiration for
the Spanish Civil Guard, who are a loyal and well-
disciplined body of men. The accident did not tend to
relieve the intense strain of fatigue I felt owing to my long
and fast car journeys, and this became worse a month later
when, approaching Valladolid in rainy weather, we were
unable to keep to the road at a curve and went for a
quadruple toss in a ploughed field. Fortunately, the car
was modern, with a reinforced steel body, and though it
slid on its roof, turning over twice longways before it
turned over twice sideways, it stood up to the strain. The
car was wrecked, but I had only cuts and bruises and a
strained back. It might have been much worse. Peasants
dragged the car back to the road, and when the battered
wings were pulled up from their contact with the wheels,
and when the doors were tied in position with string, we
found that the engine still ticked over and that we could
drive into Valladolid. Antoine was not hurt, and while
I spent thirty-six hours in bed with a touch of fever, he
had local fitters set to work, and I used the same damaged
car for a whole month during the operations for the relief
of the Alcazar at Toledo. What had done most damage
to me was the fact that in the luggage container at the

62

THE MOVEMENT IN THE SOUTH

back there were stored five large cans of petrol. When
the car overturned, the seat moved, and all of these came
through from the back and were tossed about in the car,
hitting and jolting me from every side. My head must
be unusually thick and hard, for though all the petrol
cans were dented, I had only superficial cuts and grazes.
My back, however, hurt me for a long time, and I found
the marches across stubble fields approaching Toledo
extremely tiring and difficult.

Throughout this period I was much beholden to an
excellent and able comrade, M. Jean d’Hospital, a French
journalist who helped me in all the material things of life
and often volunteered out of his turn to take my tele¬
grams back, even in the middle of the night, along the
dangerous road to the telegraph office at Talavera de la
Reina.

To pick up the chronological thread of my narrative, I
found soon after my return from the south that General
Franco’s troops were making rapid progress and were just
about to capture Merida and thus secure complete road
liaison with General Mola’s troops of the north who were
in Caceres. Captain Aguilera, whom I have already men¬
tioned, and who was often a good friend to journalists,
gave me the latest news and advised me to try to be in
time for the capture of Badajoz. Captain Aguilera, other¬
wise the Count d’Alba de Yeltis, like so many Spaniards,
spoke excellent English. He and young Pablo Merry
del Val and also Captain Bolin, chief of the Press office
with General Franco, in the south first and afterwards
at Salamanca, could have been taken anywhere for
Englishmen.

Starting off again for the south I came to the walled
town of Avila, so well known to the tourist. It was the

THE SPANISH WAR

home of Saint '1'heresa, the hnious wom.Rn doctor of the
Church in the sixteenth century, and a legend has grown
up round her name in the present civil war. The Red
columns commanded by the notorious Mangada were
advancing through the Sierra de Gredos, committing
terrible atrocities in all the villages—atrocities which have
been recounted to me by survivors and eyewitnesses and
which have been duly related in the official documents
published by the Nationalist government—and had
reached a point distant only about eight miles from the
city. Mangada and his staff were seated by the road
consulting their maps, when a woman dressed in black was
brought before them by a sergeant who said that he had
taken her prisoner as she was coming along the Avila road.
Mangada rudely questioned the woman, who was tall and
pale-faced and about sixty years of age, her silver hair just
visible beneath her close-drawn black silk mantilla. She
raised her hand and said: “As you value your lives, go back.
Avila is full of troops, with guns and other great instru¬
ments of war, and they are preparing to sally forth and
destroy you.”

Mangada was perplexed and disturbed at this state¬
ment and decided to fall back on Cebreros, some fifteen
miles in the rear, and there await further information
before marching to the assault. He was never able to
advance a yard, and was ultimately driven back when the
Nationalist offensive began. But he learnt that Avila had
been empty of troops at the time, and when he asked for
the woman prisoner to be brought before him to answer
for this he was told that she had disappeared. Many Red
prisoners have vouched for this story being true, as I have
told it, and in the Province of Avila it is claimed that the
woman was no less than Saint Theresa come to save her

64

THE MOVEMENT IN THE SOUTH

city from the terrible menace of Red Invasion, with its
consequences of murder* rape* arson, and other crimes.

As I approached Caceres, the limits of the Northern
Army, there were plenty of signs of fighting. The roads
were encumbered with Red Cross cars and lorries taking
men or supplies to the front line. General Franco, who
had just effected his liaison at Caceres with General Mola,
was striking a double blow from' Caceres and Merida; he
was pushing eastwards to Navalmoral de la Mata so as
to capture the Tagus Talley and reach the key position
of Talavera de la Reina, and westward his forces were
attacking Badajoz, the last Red stronghold in the whole
of that part of the country.

The Reds were fighting fiercely, but as usual In a dis¬
connected fashion owing to rivalry between officers and
Committees of Public Safety, which seemed to share the
command. While it was still possible to save Badajoz, the
Red columns dallied at Navalmoral de la Mata, burning
villages and murdering thousands of men, women, and
children, and It was only when Merida had fallen, and
when the assault parties of the Seventh Bandera of the
Legion were blowing down the gates of Badajoz, that they
made something like a concerted push with the .object of
cutting right through the centre of General'Franco’s
army. In such conditions, the blank failure they met and
the rout which followed were only to be expected.

Caceres is a beautiful town of churches and palaces, and
It also possesses the additional charm of having an excel¬
lent hotel. But after the briefest visit to staff head¬
quarters for my pass to be made out I started off for
Merida. I knew that there was fierce fighting at two
points, Merida and Navalmoral de la Mata, and I chose
the first point as nearer and to my mind more important.

65

THE SPANISH WAR

But I was not fated to get to Merida so easily as all that.
I had covered about half the distance of fifty-odd miles
which separate the two towns, when there was a brisk
crackle of rifle fire. At a corner of the road ahead of me
was one of those small castles, composed of a massive
square central tower flanked with loftier round towers at
each of the four corners, which are so frequent in this part
of Spain. A hundred yards farther on was a small farm¬
house, and between the two there was a line of Civil Guards
taking cover behind walls and hedgerows, blazing away
at the crest of the hills to the east. The rattle of National¬
ist machine-guns burst out, as through my glasses I could
see a little line of distant figures run from one fold of the
ground to another. In the fields in front of me an occa¬
sional explosion showed that the Reds had at least a couple
of pieces of light artillery with them.

An officer explained to me that this was evidently a
flanking party of the main Red force attacking Merida
trying to get across the road. The road, as far as he knew,
was not cut, but he strongly recommended that I should
not attempt to take it until the next morning when a
convoy with an escort would be going through. It was
tantalising to realise that only twenty-five miles separated
me from Merida, but as I had no desire to fall into the
hands of the Reds I told my chauffeur to turn round
and I drove back to a solemn eight-course dinner at the
Caceres hotel. Over coffee, I was given a graphic account
of how the Reds had been routed that very day at Naval-
moral. News of their projected attack in great force was
brought by scout ’planes. It was thus known that, besides
three columns of motor-lorries carrying troops and
artillery, there was an armoured train followed by a supply
train. A small body of Falangist militia was rushed to

66

THE MOVEMENT IN THE SOUTH

the hills north of Navalmoral with instructions not to
show themselves until the armoured train had passed the
station. They were then to attack straight down the
railway line, holding it merely long enough for a squad of
engineers to dynamite the line and prevent the train
from retiring. All of them were then to withdraw in good
order to the hills. At the town of Navalmoral itself a
thousand men, including two companies of the 27th Foot,
dug themselves in and, with artillery and machine-guns,
awaited the enemy attack. Everything went off accord¬
ing to programme; the armoured train was brought to
a standstill in a cutting three hundred yards from the
station, with the result that it could not use its field guns or
rifles. The Red frontal attack along the road was mown
down, and three heavy armoured cars were captured.

This seemed a good presage for the fighting round
Merida, of which nothing so far was known, the com¬
munication by wire having been cut. The convoy which
set out next morning was composed of some twenty
lorries, two of which carried soldiers and the others
ammunition, wine in casks, and food, some of which was
alive in the shape of four screaming pigs for the white
soldiers, and a number of sheep and goats for the Moors.
The commander of the convoy opened the way in a
torpedo sports car and I was told to place my car in the
middle. One lorry with soldiers brought up the rear.
And so we started off in an immense cloud of white dust
and, bowling along at about thirty-five miles an hour, we
passed the point where I had been held up, and in an hour
and a half we reached the bridge leading to Merida.
Then there came shouts from the head of the column
which by then had closed up, and I saw soldiers and
drivers jumping from their lorries and scattering in every

67

THE SPANISH WAR

direction. Antoine had brought our car to a standstill at
the moment that the brakes screamed along the column,
and he looked right and left for a chance to back and turn.

For a period of time which seemed to me like minutes
but which could not have been more than half a second
or so, I thought that the fight of the day before, of which
we had had no news, had gone the wrong way and that
the Reds were in the old red-tiled town straight ahead
of us. It was a possibility and, as I knew that we could
not turn the car on that narrow bridge, I expected
machine-gun fire at close range any instant and gloomily
reflected on the fact that with the very best of luck we
were fifty miles from Caceres, which meant a weary two
days’ trudge along the hills. But then came instantaneous
relief; all the running men were looking at the sky and,
doing likewise, I saw five ’planes circling. They were
Red bombers, and the soldiers were merely obeying orders
and scattering in the fields. Antoine and myself speedily
did the same, and for an hour we stood in the shadow of
the old Roman aqueduct which, with its grey and lichen-
covered arches, soared infinitely high above us, limned
against a clear blue sky. Bomb after bomb was dropped
—the Reds were trying in vain to hit the huge aluminium-
painted petrol reservoirs near the railway station. Finally
the “all clear” was given and, much relieved, we climbed
back into our cars and moved along.

In Merida I had just time to thank the officer in com¬
mand of our escort when again the Red ’planes appeared
overhead. I made for a cellar conveniently indicated by
a flag, and Antoine, who insisted on backing the car into
an alley-way, joined me there a moment later. My ob¬
jective was to see Colonel Telia, the Legion officer in
command at Merida, to hear from him how the fighting

68

THE MOVEMENT IN THE SOUTH

was progressing and to obtain a further pass enabling me
to go on to Badajoz, almost due east another fifty miles.
But it was difficult to find his headquarters and more
difficult to reach them. The Red bombing ’planes were
full of energy and were coming over every half-hour or so.
Fortunately, their bombs were light, or otherwise Merida
would have been destroyed. As it was, the streets were
full of fallen tiles, bricks, and masonry, and the only safe
places were the deep, well-protected cellars.

Finally I met a staff officer who took me along the
streets to the western suburbs, where I could get forward
under cover of the red brick walls of the bull-ring and sefe
the Red attacking forces who were at that very moment
trying to force their way into the town. Their task was
hopeless. I could see them in little groups moving along
the low grey hills which were anything from one thousand
to three thousand yards distant. There was a lack of
cohesion in the infantry itself, a lack of liaison with the
Red artillery which was visible and which showed that
even before they attacked they were a beaten force. In
those days there were no Russian tanks, but the Reds were
using armoured cars, three of which I could see motion¬
less and out of action leaning drunkenly against the banks
of the road. Machine-gun units belonging both to the
Moors and to the Legion were ensconced in the brown
fields sloping down before me, and I could see the gunners
placing clip after clip in their guns, while the crisp rattle
of their firing sounded almost closer than reality. From
time to time a Red shell whined overhead to burst with
a terrific report in the low brick and mud houses just
behind us, while there was a perpetual patter of bullets.

Weeks afterwards I learnt that just on the other side of
the bull-ring, a mere hundred yards away, there was at

69

THE SPANISH WAR

the same moment another English journalist engaged in
watching the fight. He was an old friend of mine, Major
Harold Pemberton, son of the well-known novelist, and
was representing the Daily Express. In Paris I always met
him at motor and air shows, and my recollections of bim
went back for nearly twenty years. That was the last lost
opportunity I had of seeing him, for the next time I
heard of him he was lying dead under the ruins of a
crashed aeroplane on a Scottish hill. He had escaped the
dangers of shell and buEet in the Spanish war to fall
victim to an aeroplane accident at home.

The fight in front of the buE-ring was quickly decided,
and before I had been there half an hour I could see that
the Reds were in fuE retreat and the Patriot forces were
bringing up their motor-lorries and their own armoured
cars to start off in pursuit. Friendly guides took me down
the streets of Merida, for the moment free from the air
bomb perE, to Colonel TeEa’s headquarters. I found him
a man of young middle age, taE and athletic, with a
smiling oval face and brown hair sleekly brushed back
from a high forehead. He spoke in excellent French—I
rarely found a Spanish staff or field officer who did not
speak either excellent French or English—and outEned
to me the position of his forces. I was to meet him and
the other leaders—Yague, with his bison’s head sur¬
mounted with shaggy iron-grey hair; Asensio, like a taE,
thin English colonel, his temples grey and his face brick-
coloured and seamed; Castejon, of middle stature with
broad shoulders and round black head; men who wrote
pages of Spanish history and whose names wiE not be for¬
gotten so long as the Spanish Legion lives—many a time
during the next three months on the long road which led
to Madrid.

70

THE MOVEMENT IN THE SOUTH
The sun was still shining down from a blue sky without
a single cloud as, with faithful Antoine at the wheel,
grumbling as usual at the quality of the petrol which
forced him to clean his filter every hundred miles or so,
we swept along the road to Badajoz, a sheer delight for
motorists, with its even surface and its carefully banked-up
curves. The castellated city with its bastions and its
walls quickly rose in sight. Along the road there were
bodies scattered here and there, evidently Reds. As we
swept in a curve to the main gateway, where a Moorish
sentry asked for our passes, we could see other bodies
lying in a breach.

There had been a fierce fight for Badajoz, which had
fallen barely twenty hours before I arrived. The walls of
Badajoz, the city of many historic sieges, are some thirty
feet thick. Its bastions and casemates would need long
battering even from modem artillery. But Colonel
Yague, who with Castejon, then only a major, was in
command of the assault columns, did not want to destroy
the walls and ruin the historic interest of the town.
There existed already two breaches, not made by shot or
shell but by a modern municipality who wished to run
tramlines through to country villages. These were ready-
means of access, but the Reds had placed sandbag barri¬
cades with machine-guns to enfilade them. There were
machine-guns also in the bastions and on the walls. The
first attack was held up by machine-gun fire and, wisely.
Colonel Yague ordered a fresh artillery preparation for
the morrow. The Legion and the IVIoors then made a
second attack. Engineers with dynamite blew down one
of the gateways, and the Seventh Bandera of the Spanish
Legion rushed through the split and broken timbers, taking
the sandbag redoubt in front of the main breach from the

3* 71

THE SPANISH WAR

rear. Machine-guns were turned on by the Reds, who
fought bravely. The Bandera, however, stormed on, taking
seconds only to cross the gap of bullet-swept ground. They
lost 127 men within twenty seconds, but the survivors
with bayonets and clubbed rifles swept through the
machine-gun posts, killing all they met. A minute later
the Nationalist troops were surging through the town. I,
who followed a day later, could see the course of the
attack by corpses and bloodstains, by bullet marks and
bomb damage up the narrow grey winding streets of old
Badajoz. Lorries were still picking up the dead, and four
lorries full were slowly driving to an improvised burial
ground outside the city.

One of the Badajoz police barracks dominates the main
street to the central square and the military headquarters
with its ugly shoulder of brick and stone jutting out right
across the road, which there makes an L turn. It was
occupied by a dozen or so of Blue Assault Police, who,
having taken’part in the terrible crimes which had made
Badajoz run deep with blood, could not surrender, and
by some fifty Red militiamen. They were still all lying
there stiff and dead when I visited the place. It appears
that in the great hall on the first floor of the building they
were keeping up a rapid fire and preventing any progress,
when they were taken by surprise from behind and killed
to a man. They had forgotten to bar and bolt the door
of the barracks which gave on a side street, and half a
company of the Legion, smashing their way through
houses, had found the massive steel doors ajar and had
stolen in. Silently they had climbed the double stairs
where there was no sentry and had entered the hall to
see the whole line of men with backs turned firing into
the street below. A whispered order, and after a volley

7 *

THE MOVEMENT IN THE SOUTH

the Patriots dashed forward and with bayonet or the
deadly Spanish navaja they had cleared the place within

a minute. - , ,

The Red officer in command at Badajoz was Colonel

Puigdengala, and I learnt later that he had fled to the
Portuguese frontier forty-eight hours earlier. He surren¬
dered to a Portuguese officer at the frontier, saying: My
men would not fight, and so I had to leave.” At that
moment the sound of the machine-guns could be clearly
heard, and the Portuguese frontier officer took Colonel
Puigdengala by the arm to the frontier fine and said: “Do
you hear that? You are only a coward and you have
deserted your men.” The Red officer later found his way
back to Madrid, but, having again left his post somewhat
hurriedly, was dealt with in a summary fashion by his own

people. _ , ,

There has grown up round Badajoz a legend ol

Nationalist terrorism following on Red atrocities. How
little truth, however, there is in such allegations, can be
imagined when the only newspaper evidence available is
examined and found to break down completely. Mainly
based on the alleged description given by a well-known
American newspaper correspondent, it falls to the ground
when it is found that the correspondent in question in¬
dignantly denies ever having been to Badajoz or having
written a line about alleged Nationalist atrocities.

The truth is there was a great deal of street-to-street
and house-to-house fighting, and therefore a large number
of Reds were shot. Reds who started sniping from houses
after the occupation of the town and after all the fighting
was over were naturally dealt with in accordance with the
normal laws of war which would be exercised by any
British officer in command in similar circumstances.

73

THE SPANISH WAR

The Reds, before the Nationalists entered the town—
while, indeed, they were actually laying the fuses at the
gates—had shot some hundred hostages, and when the
Nationalists stormed through and captured men who were
identified by eyewitnesses as being among the actual
murderers their shrift was short. After a summary
examination of their identity they were tried by drum¬
head court martial and shot. This, however, was prob¬
ably the last instance of drum-head courts martial, for
General Franco—a stickler for strict discipline—never
accepted such rough and ready methods which might lead
to injustice being committed, and insisted that no man
should be shot without a proper trial by a public court
martial and for definitely proved crime. To bring about
this result he did not hesitate to make examples among his
own rank and file in cases where he felt it necessary.

Throughout the time I have been with the Spanish
Nationalists I never heard of a single case of torture being
applied, of prisoners being grossly ill-used, or of their
being put to death except by shooting in accordance with
the military code for the infliction of capital punishment.
I have during the past year met dozens of newspaper
correspondents and visitors to Spain of every shade of
political opinion, and not once have I heard any serious
accusation of any form of atrocities having been com¬
mitted by the soldiers of the Nationalist Army. On the
other hand, the circumstantial and terrible accounts I
have heard, often at first hand, of every form of atrocity
committed by the Reds would fill a large volume. The
Spanish Government has already published evidence of
the Red crimes sufficient to convince all but the politi¬
cally blinded.

74

IV

IRUN AND SAN SEBASTIAN
AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER

P OLITICAL and military objectives, it was felt by
General Mola, would both be best served in the north
by the capture of Irun and San Sebastian. All the Basque
country consists of hills and valleys radiating in every
direction, and therefore fighting in it is a difficult problem.
The Navarre and Alava Basques were spoiling, however,
to get at their enemies, the town-bred Basque Separatists,
and the capture of these two towns would drive a wedge
between the Basques and Reds of Bilbao and the French
frontier.

The Carlists of Navarre from the first days of the war
had seized and held the hill approaches to both Irun and
San Sebastian. They had gone out at night, these sure¬
footed, fair-haired, red-faced mountaineers, keeping in
touch with each other by blowing their hunting horns,
and, before the Reds had known it, all the principal peaks
and ridges by which Irun might be defended from a dis¬
tance had fallen into the hands of the Nationalists.
Nevertheless the final forts and positions held by the Reds
were very strong. They had some heavy artillery and a
wealth of machine-guns and automatic weapons. Irun,
the first town to be attacked, is naturally very strong,
protected from the sea by the ridge and fort of
Guadalupe and on the land side by the Puenta ridge
with the fort of San Marcial, while the Bidassoa, which
forms the frontier with France, ensured an unviolated

75

THE SPANISH WAR

left flank as well as means of revictualling and ultimate
retreat.

The main line of attack on Irun, it was decided, was to
be on the Puenta ridge and Fort San Marcial, and to carry
this out there had to be established a road for supplies
behind this front. The Reds had blown up the Enderlarza
bridge over which this road runs, and by artillery and air
raids hindered it being rebuilt. The Nationalists then took
a bold but simple step which heightened my opinion of
their engineers. They abandoned the road, and tearing
up the rails on the light railway which leads from Irun to
Vera, they converted the railway into a first-class road.
Electric light was installed in the tunnels, and for the
weeks the attack lasted there was never any difficulty in
getting supplies to the front.

When I found that the main attack was going to be on
the Spanish side of the Bidassoa I was delighted. I had
been having before this the greatest difficulty in getting
my news through to London. The cable at first was not
working, and when it did start it was for a long while un¬
reliable. The result was that I had to keep a relay of cars
to take my messages back from various parts of the front
into France, and in many cases a courier to telephone
them direct to London from Hendaye or St. Jean de Luz.
As often as not, some important piece of information
would be available just after my courier had left, and I
would have to make the long journey over the Velate pass
to Dancharia and thence to St. Jean de Luz myself.
Looking at the records of my first car I find that in the
first six weeks of the movement I made the double
journey out to Spain and back Into France thirty times.
It meant arriving in St. Jean de Luz rarely much before
ten o’clock at night. My messages would be ready, as I

76

IRUN AND SAN, SEBASTIAN

had developed the technique of typing them out m my
car while travelling, and I could thus dictate them over
the telephone, often developing them from a bare frame-

work as I went.

With urgent news I was sometimes kept busy until two
o’clock in the morning. In the meantime Antoine, with

SKETCH MAP SHOWING THE POSITION OF IRUN, SAN SEBASTIAN,
VITORIA AND PAMPELONA

a special squad of mechanics, would be overhauling the
car, changing segments, renewing brakebands and fitting
tyres so that at six o’clock punctually we would be
shooting off back to Spain.

All this entailed a great strain and so I welcomed the
change of activities to a well-defined front with a single
well-defined objective: the capture of the two Basque coast
towns. I could see the importance of the move, and
despite the bombast of the Basque Separatists who every
night could be heard at the Buffet de la Gare of Hendaye

77

THE SPANISH WAR

boasting how Iran was impregnable, and how they had
all sworn to fight to the last to keep the hated “Fascists”
out, I could also realise that the troops of General Mola
were bound sooner or later to force their way over the
passes and capture the two towns.

The journey to Vera, headquarters of Colonel Beor-
legui, who commanded the Navarre Brigades entrusted
with the attack, was short, and it was even possible with
the help of some of my Carlist friends at night-time to
make the journey shorter still by the simple process of
wading the Bidassoa at one of its many fords. In this way
the war had been brought, as it were, to my front door¬
step in France. Those of us who were in the know could
see the piles of stores and the units being brought up
through Vera to Enderlarza, and I am afraid many Reds
were also in the know, as it was child’s play for them to
watch most of the preparations from the French side of
the Bidassoa where their Communist friends were always
w illin g to keep them informed. During these days many
were the shots exchanged across the frontiers, but such
incidents were always hushed up as neither side made any
official protest.

August 26 ushered in the first big drive against the
river road to Iran and the Puenta ridge. After a night
with the Spanish outposts I crossed the river to my
“neutral” post of observation in the garden of a little
country hotel on the French side. The garden went
down in terraces to the edge of the river, and the whole
of the battlefield was in front of me. There was the
lazily flowing Bidassoa, there beyond it a narrow strip of
waving green maize standing a good five feet high, then
a narrow country road with two or three farms, a school
house, and two square white houses, used by the Spanish

7 8

IRUN AND SAN SEBASTIAN

carabineros or Customs guards. Nest to the road, but
below it, ran the railway line. Above the road the ground
rose rapidly in folds—first fields, and then woods and
bushes. The slopes were all held by the Reds, and all
these seemingly peaceful woods and patches of shrub on
which the summer sun was shining would have to be
carried before the far end of the slopes, the Puenta ridge
itself, could be captured.

The first attack began at six o’clock in the morning
when, after a brief artillery bombardment, the files of the
Nationalist assault companies began to steal through the
maize fields. Their tactics were good, except that the
men kept too close together and that the machine-guns
destined to keep the Reds down in their trenches were
badly placed and many of the Red positions were not
under fire. At the same time, a small tank moved forward
over a mine crater which cut the road surface, to drive
away the Red armoured cars and the Red armoured train.

I must pay tribute to the Spanish officer—I was never able
to ascertain his name—who walked on the road ahead of
the tank piloting it through the mine crater amidst a hail
of bullets fired almost point-blank. How he got through
the storm of bullets I cannot tell, but we all drew a
breath of relief when we saw him step aside into a recess
in the bank and thus into comparative safety, his task
having been accomplished. The little tank began firing
with its machine-gun, and immediately the Red armoured
cars and the train began slowly to move away. Fifty
Carhsts then ran forward and began with sandbags and
timber to fill the mine crater so that Patriot armoured cars
and lorries might pass in their turn. Many of them were
killed and wounded, but as they dropped we saw other
volunteers run forward to take their places. When the

79

THE SPANISH WAR

job was finished, the Nationalist armoured cars rattled
forward, but the first to try to get over jammed at once.
The skirting of armour plate was too low and, catching
the timber track, tore it up. This was the first contre¬
temps, but there were to be others even more serious.
The troops on the river-bed had meanwhile made their
assault. They had captured the first obj ectives, the school
house and Lodiena farm and beyond that the railway
station and Custom-house. They had dashed forward
bravely, carrying the scarlet and gold National flag, but
they had sustained heavy losses because they “bunched”
too much. But rallying round the flag when the ensign
fell, they stormed the enemy strong points, and the
armoured cars and train already in retreat made off at full
speed.

The Red machine-gun fire was overpowering. At one
moment I estimated that there must have been something
like four hundred machine-guns and automatic rifles and
sub-machine-guns firing from the Red trenches. But it
is also true that I have never heard such a wasteful fire, of
which at least seventy per cent must have been mis¬
directed. Had that not been the case, all the advanced
Patriot units would have been wiped out. As it was, the
Nationalists who had tried to climb the slope towards the
ridge and to filter through the woods, were held up and
were glad indeed to be able to dig themselves in before
nightfall on the fringes of the woods they had been un¬
able to take. The heavy loss in the afternoon’s fighting
caused Colonel Beorlegui to cancel orders for a further
attack, which had been planned for six o’clock.

When I visited the, Carlist lines after nightfall I found
plenty of signs of battle. There were little groups of
dead in the maize fields. One young fellow I distinctly

80

IRUN AND SAN SEBASTIAN

remember, who was lying by the riverside next to the ford;
he had apparently crept there wounded in the heat of the
day to get some water and had been struck down by a
machine-gun bullet. The wounded had already all been
evacuated.

It was a strange scene. Bullets and shells were coming
down the road in bursts from Behobia, while the school
house which was burning fiercely threw a fitful light on
the fifty engineers who were toiling with sandbags, at
work on the mine crater, making a good job of it this time.
The roadway would be ready for to-morrow, but its failure
to-day, which held up the armoured cars, had delayed
operations at a vital moment.

Then there came one of those periods of procrastination
and hesitancy which have been so frequent throughout the
war The Nationalist high command, seriously concerned
at the volume of machine-gun fire and the certain heavy
losses if their troops were again to be sent to the assault
of thousands of yards of steep, sloping, scrub-covered
country, decided to send for heavy artillery and to hoist
six-inch guns on the hills beyond Enderlarza before con¬
tinuing their attacks. In the meantime, however, two
mght attacks were directed from the farther slopes on
Fort San Marcial. The attacking columns were guided by
Carhsts who knew every inch of the ground, and we who
lay in the maize fields by the river bank could tell by the
sound of the firing what progress was being made. The
noise was terrific at first, but it then began to die down
veenng far off to the right. A Carlist captain sitting
beside me on the ground, said, “It is all over: the hill was
too steep, and they are being driven back.” He was right-
some s ight progress had been registered on the top of
the ridge, but the Red barricades and blockhouses in the

81

THE SPANISH WAR

woods held out, and the Nationalists had lost heavily for
a gain of only a hundred yards or so.

The Reds all this time were receiving unashamed aid
from across the French frontier. The consumption of
small arms ammunition was enormous, but their ammuni¬
tion columns received hundreds of thousands of rounds
each night from France. Their unskilled use of machine-
guns and automatic rifles—later the Reds were to learn
how to look after these delicate arms—had put scores of
them out of action, but here again spare guns and spare
parts were taken across from France every night.

It was not until September 2 that the next push was
attempted, and this time, with plenty of heavy and light
artillery, it was successful, with comparatively trifling
losses. The Red trenches were plastered with high ex¬
plosives, and many Red comrades early thought it safer to
withdraw to Irun and join in the more congenial and less
dangerous work of looting houses and setting them on fire.

Punctually at noon the Nationalist batteries opened
fire. Then at one o’clock the barrage shifted to over the
Puenta ridge, and suddenly I saw a glint of bayonets in the
patch of wood that we observers for facility of reference
had dubbed “T” wood. Five files of men emerged at a
slow walking pace—remember the slope they were climb-
ing was very' steep—and then deployed. Two flags were
being carried. From time to time a man fell, but the line
moved slowly onwards, and then it reached the crest and
the flags were planted in a couple of redoubts.

It was evident that the next stage of the fight would be
on the reverse slopes of the Puenta, and so with three
companions I hurried over the French hills to a fresh
point of observation. I say the French hills, for they were
almost as much under fire as those on the Spanish side.

82

IRUN AND SAN SEBASTIAN

We had to scramble and to slide and do a lot of moving
forward on all fours before we lost the sound of machine-
gun bullets whistling overhead and cutting leaves and
twigs from the trees and shrubs. Finally, without hurt,
we managed to reach a friendly ravine in which we had
full shelter from stray bullets, and thus again reached the
water-side in full view of the turn in the road and the last
great sandbag barricade next the Behobia Custom-house
—a square whitewashed building with its loopholes and
its machine-guns.

There was a little group of Basque peasants—three
young men, two women, and a child—at this point shelter-
ing behind the walls of a tiny farmhouse. They greeted
me politely in the Basque fashion, and one of the women
said: “Take care. Monsieur; do not stand in a line with
that window, for the bullets come through there. My
grandmother was killed there in the last war.” She
meant, of course, the last Carlist war of 1875 when Irun
was also attacked and when in the same way bullets came
flying across the frontier.

This time they kept hitting the wall of the house and
occasionally chipping a tile on the roof. This worried
the watch dog, which kept running out on to the road
to see what was happening, and growling uneasily. Each
time one of the young men would go down to fetch him
back at i mm inent risk to his own safety.

Across the river I could see our old friend the armoured
train with steam up preparing to make another dash to
the rear. A battery of four-inch guns on the slopes of
the old fort was being hauled on to lorries to be taken
away. In a few minutes, it would be under full machine-
gun fire. On the reverse side of the Puenta ridge Reds
were hurrying away to the rear in twos and threes.

83

THE SPANISH WAR

At the Custom-house barricade on the Red side there
were two armoured cars and two brand-new saloon cars,
evidently belonging to some Communist or Anarchist
militia officer. The armoured cars were firing continu¬
ously, and from every window of the Custom-house
building the barrels of machine-guns and automatic
rifles protruded. The din was deafening and the cause
was evident. Lumbering up the river road came three
Nationalist armoured cars side by side, their heavy
machine-guns spitting fire at the Red barricade. They
came up quite slowly until they were within twenty
yards’ distance of the barricade, and then two of them put
on a little spurt and came butting at the six-foot high
wall of sandbags. Some of the bags fell, and the cars,
still firing at this terribly close range, backed away and
then again butted at the barricade, and a few more bags
fell down.

The Red fire was dying down from the Custom-house,
which was pierced like a sieve with bullet holes, but the
Red armoured cars were still in action. Four Reds,
attired in blue, ran out from behind the Custom-house
with a wooden case. It was full of dynamite bombs
which they began to fight and throw over the barricade
at the attacking Nationalist cars. These home-made
bombs went off with a frightful explosion, but they
appeared to do no damage at all and did not stop them
battering away at the barricade. The four men—I was
told that three of them were French and one a Belgian—
were extremely brave, for they had little shelter and had
to expose themselves every time they threw a bomb.

Along the railway track, following the retreating
armoured train, the garrison of the Custom-house
redoubt were running as fast as they could; columns of

IRUN AND SAN SEBASTIAN

flames roared up from the two Red armoured cars and
from the two saloon cars on the roadside, and more men
came running away. Only remained the four figures,
crouched behind the sandbags, lighting their dynamite
sticks and throwing them. Then there came a tremendous
shout, and a score of men waving the Nationalist flag
leaped and bounded down the slopes of the Puenta ridge
whose last redoubt had fallen. In a minute they were
on the four men, there was a whirr of rifles, and four
bodies lay still on the road. Custom-house Redoubt
had fallen, and the road to Behobia and Irun was open.

The attack had begun at one o’clock and it was now
just five o’clock. Antoine offered to go and fetch the
car, which we had left behind a bend of the road at
Biriatou, and he set off at a run, jumping from one ditch
to another and sometimes bent double to avoid the
bullets which were still sweeping the road. When he
came back with the car, which had four bullet-holes in
it, I was able to set off for the Spanish headquarters,
crossing the hills and the frontier at Vera. I was then
told that fort San Marcial had fallen and that the Nation¬
alist volunteers and legionaries were holding all the houses
on the fringe of Behobia, but were not advancing as
General Beorlegui had ordered that there was to be no
street fighting at night.

There was little doubt but that the morale of the Red
militia had gone to pieces. Hundreds of them were
crossing the river and taking refuge in France. While I
was watching the attack on the sandbag redoubt I saw
one militiaman making up his mind what to do-—fight or
run away and live to fight another day. He had come
from the redoubt on the road and ran as fast as he could
down the ..little pathway on the river-side. He was a

85

THE SPANISH WAR

tall young man with unshaven face, curly brown hair and
blue eyes. He was wearing the universal blue overalls
with a scarlet handkerchief and the Basque rope slippers.
As he ran, bullets were kicking up the dust all round him.
Finally he reached one of the little sentry boxes used by
the Spanish Customs patrols at night. He took shelter
behind it and mopped his brow. It was visible that had
there been a Red officer near by, or had there been any
discipline, he and dozens of others could have been
rounded up to continue the resistance. But he was all
alone. Peering round the sentry box, he could see the
Red cars still blazing down the road and the National
flag now flying bravely over the redoubt. To the right
of him in the maize fields there were other runaways.
Suddenly with a great splash his rifle whirled into the
river. The man then took off his red kerchief and stuffed
it in his pocket. Next he took off his cord slippers which
he tied round his neck and, stooping, he washed some of
the grime from his face in a pool of rain-water on the
path. Then picking up courage he ran out from his
shelter along the path and dived into the river. Two
minutes later he was standing a few yards away from me
shaking himself like a dog. The elder of the two young
Basques next to me made a sign, and one of the women
took the young man by the hand and led him into the
house. “He is a Basque,” was the brief explanation, “and
we stick together even when we are fighting on different
sides. He is a Red and we are Whites, but we have to
shelter him and I trust that Monsieur will say nothing of
what he has seen.”

The progress made by the Nationalists was visible
next morning, when from the French side I could see my
Spanish friends, including Captain Aguilera, the Press

86

IRUN AND SAN SEBASTIAN

officer, standing on the other side of the Behobia bridge.
Taking the weary road through the hills and by Vera and
Enderlarza I was able to join them a few hours later, and
was thus able to enter Irun at the same time as the lead¬
ing companies of Colonel Beorlegui’s victorious columns.
The Reds, who had set fire to the main streets of Irun,
which contained some very fine buildings, were holding
out at the bridge and the railway station.

When we entered the town the whole of it appeared
to be one mass of flames and we could feel the heat hun¬
dreds of yards away. At the cross-roads the Reds, who
had been abundantly supplied with provisions and ammu¬
nition from France during the night, were still firing.

Not only were the Reds being revictualled abundantly,
not only were they receiving arms and ammunition
from France, but they used the French end of the bridge
as a place of refuge. One young Red stood in French
territory, flourishing a huge automatic, and questioned
all refugees and militiamen who came across. Some
Reds he turned back, he and two young fellows with him
acting as a “stragglers’ post.” Others he allowed through
on the promise they would return. These then deposited
their guns and ammunition in the French Custom-house
and proceeded to the railway buffet to have a hot meal.
On their way back they would pick up their guns and
pouches and dash across the bridge again. It is true the
Prefect of the department and the Special Commissary
were busy at the station dealing with the thousands of
refugees who were arriving by boat from across the river
at Fuentarabia. It is a pretty trait that the boatmen of
Irun and Fuentarabia throughout the troubles ferried
over both Nationalists and Reds who might be in danger
and never charged a penny for their services.

87

THE SPANISH WAR

Colonel Beorlegui, tall and elegant, with brown hair
only tinged with grey, was standing a few paces from the
cross-roads dictating orders to his adjutant, when a shot
rang out from a neighbouring building and he stumbled
and fell. The bullet had struck him in the thigh. A
surgeon rushed up and hastily dressed the wound. But
Colonel Beorlegui refused to enter his waiting car and
be driven off to the field ambulance, saying, “There is
plenty of time; this little affair will be over in a few
minutes.” But the wound, slight though it was at first
thought to be, was destined to prove fatal. Whether it
was due to Colonel Beorlegui’s action in refusing to go
immediately to the ambulance or to some subsequent
imprudence, gangrene set in and the gallant officer died
five weeks later when holding a command on the Aragon
front. It was only in the last ten days of his life that he
consented to leave his column and be taken to hospital.

Legionaries had broken into the house where the soli¬
tary sniper had taken shelter, and he was disposed of in
a second. The same fate overtook seven Communists
before my eyes a moment later. Out of a side street
dashed a huge grey car and up the avenue in the direction
of San Sebastian. Already there were many Nationalist
staff cars in the streets, and this grey car filled with Reds
might have passed unnoticed but for the fact that,
holding automatics at each window and also through a
smashed pane behind, they opened rapid fire at the
soldiers advancing in single file on either side of the road.
Bullets were flying in every direction, for soldiers ahead
also opened fire on the car, and I found a doorway handy
to take shelter. One of the first shots fired by the
Nationalists must have hit the driver, for the car lurched
drunkenly at a street corner and, sliding across the road,

88

IRUN AND SAN SEBASTIAN

came to a standstill next a tree. Tlie Reds in the car
jumped out and tried to flee, still firing. But not one of
them got more than ten yards. I went and looked at
the car and found it crammed with arms, while in the
luggage container were a dozen bottles of brandy and
whisky and a large case of champagne.

The attack against the railway station was now being
organised. It was under the orders of a Spanish officer
called Major Morphi, and when I questioned him I
found that his original name was O’Murphy and that
he was the descendant of one of many hundreds of Irish
officers who came to Spain after Limerick in the days of
William and Mary. He was a stout and merry-faced
fellow who fell only a week later in one of the attacks on
San Sebastian.

A few hand grenades quickly thrown cleared out the
railway station, and so in less than three hours Irun had
been taken. During these days of fighting both round
Irun and San Sebastian, we met a very large number of
Catalonian Nationalists, who, having escaped from what
they described as “the hell of Barcelona,” had hurriedly
volunteered in the ranks of the Requetes to fight the
hated Reds who had been slaughtering all their nearest
and dearest. The head of these Catalonian volunteers
was an enormous man. I heard his name at the time but
forget it. He was certainly six foot twc, but with a bulk
and girth, and such shoulders and thighs as made him
appear almost squat. I do not think that I have ever
seen quite so bulky a man. He walked almost with a
shuffle but at great speed and silently. I was told that
in the first hill fighting round Irun he was famous for
his night scouting expeditions, when he would go out
and surprise Red sentries.

89

THE SPANISH WAR

Another Catalonian whom I met was a major of slight
build and middle age. He had managed to leave Barce¬
lona in August after having been the eyewitness of
terrible massacres and crimes. I never dared ask him
what had happened to his family, as he bore the half-
dazed, half-fixed look of those who have been through
the fire of mental suffering and who only live for the
single objective of revenge on those who had been re¬
sponsible for the torturing of their dear ones. Through¬
out these months in Spain it was a delicate matter ever
to question anybody as to what had happened to his
family—mother, wife, or sisters—so terrible are the con¬
sequences of any civil war, but especially of one waged
by the pagan Reds encouraged by Moscow. This major
told me, however, of his escape from Barcelona. He had
been wandering round the city, living from hand to
mouth and never daring to go to his own house where he
would have been recognised, and still less to one of his
country seats in the vicinity of the city. One day,
however, he met a man who was a well-known leader of
a smuggler band, reputed to know all the paths across
the hills into France. He went up to the man and asked
him if he would smuggle him out of the country.

“I can pay you nothing now,” he told the smuggler,
“and it all depends which side wins in the present war if
1 can ever pay you anything. But, if the Nationalists
win, I guarantee on my word of honour that I will give
you ten thousand pesetas.” The smuggler who, though
professing absolute political neutrality, must for some
reason or other have had a secret but prudent leaning
towards the Anti-Reds, fell in with the proposal and
promised to take the man out of the country. “I make
one condition,” he said, “that is, that whatever I say you

90

IRUN AND SAN SEBASTIAN

immediately agree to, however terrible it may appear to
you. We are dealing with monsters and not with men, and
a single false step will cost both of us our lives. So reflect
well and swear on your word of honour that you will
assent to all I say and copy my words and actions slavishly.”

The Catalonian major agreed, and at a fixed hour two
days afterwards the couple started out on a long and
complicated cross-country journey towards an isolated
frontier village. They went on foot and then by train
and then by country motor-bus. About four miles from
the frontier the smuggler alighted from a motor-bus and,
telhng his companion to follow him, walked into the local
headquarters of the Anarchist Union. There he gave the
regular salute with raised fist imitated by the major, and
addressing the Red leader, said: “My companion Pablo
here and myself have been tracking down a couple of
priests who are trying to cross into France in disguise.
They have come through Barcelona from Lerida and we
have been ordered to follow them by the F.A.I. head¬
quarters there. Showing a handful of papers stamped
with the Anarchist symbols to back up his statement he
went on: “Pablo here caught sight of them on the motor-
bus this morning and recognised them. They are now at
the village inn; that is so, is it not?” and he turned to the
major. The latter nodded, feeling quite sick with fear.
Was it true, he asked himself, that two unfortunate’priests
were trying to escape and was he purchasing his freedom
at the price of their betrayal?

But the smuggler did not allow anybody time for
reflection. Brandishing his huge sheath-knife he said,
“This is what those devils need,” and, followed by the
group of Anarchists, rushed out towards the local
village inn. There two middle-aged men were seated

9 1

THE SPANISH WAR

who corresponded exactly to the description the smuggler
had given of the priests, and they were promptly and
roughly taken into custody. However, they had little
difficulty in proving they were not priests but two
Communists on an official mission. Apologies offered and
wine bought, the smuggler and the Catalonian refugee
found themselves despite their “mistake” very popular
with their new-found Anarchist friends.

The smuggler, taking his Catalonian refugee aside,
said to him, “I saw your look of horror and was afraid
you would betray yourself. I would not myself give
away a priest,” and here he crossed himself. “I knew who
those men were, but I knew they looked sufficiently like
clericals to make my story seem true. Now we are known
here as good Anarchists, but we must profit from that to
get across the frontier quickly, or else they may ask us
questions which we cannot answer.” The smuggler then
brought the conversation round cleverly to the frontier
and, candidly admitting his profession, said that he
proposed visiting an acquaintance whose help he often
sought when taking goods to and fro. Two Anarchists
volunteered to accompany them, and it was thus escorted
that the smuggler and his protege reached the frontier
and crossed into France. The smuggler in bidding fare¬
well to the Catalonian major told him that he meant to
return to his home, and that he was quite certain that
none of the Anarchists would ever guess what a trick
had been played on them.

The capture of San Sebastian did not take exceedingly
long, nor was it accompanied by very severe fighting. It
had not natural defences like the ridges round Iran, and
the spirit of its defenders had been lowered by the stories
told by the Red militiamen who had run away from Iran.

92

IRUN AND SAN SEBASTIAN

The Basque inhabitants, too, were anxious to avoid their
own property being burnt by Anarchists and Communists
as in Irun, and it was early that they thought of march¬
ing out and surrendering the town. All through this
fighting the position of the autonomous Basques was very
peculiar. They were fighting for Home Rule, but most
of them were men of property and of moderate opinions
and firm attachments to their traditional Roman Catholic
faith. They were condemned by their bishops for their
alliance with the anti-religious Communists and Anarch¬
ists, and looked upon with suspicion and disdain by their
strange allies. The Basque Autonomists, it should be
emphasised, are only a minority in the four Spanish
Basque provinces and have not the slighest right to pre¬
tend to represent the Basque people. In the whole of this
northern campaign, which was only of real importance in
so far as the capture of Irun went, the main fighting was
centred round Oviedo, where the so-called Asturian miners
made a really formidable force. I say “so-called” because
the great majority of these miners work in the Asturias
mines, but are not Asturians. They come from every part
of Spain, live in villages apart, and rarely mingle with the
true peasant stock of the province. They are usually
despised by the local Asturian peasants, who in times of
civil war nearly always take arms against them.

The miners, however, actuated by bitter hatred of any
regime of order though they were privileged workers with
shorter hours and higher pay than any in Spain, did fight
with courage. Their famous dynamiter os, who went
into action with twenty dynamite cartridges slung round
their waists, would have been of little value in ordinary
warfare or against well-trained troops, but they did pro¬
duce terrible havoc in house-to-house fighting in crowded

93

THE SPANISH WAR

streets against eager but untrained Nationalist militia. At
the outset this was the main story of the terrible fight for
Oviedo, where Colonel Aranda held out in the city for two
and a half months, his garrison of four thousand men being
reduced to little over six hundred able-bodied men before
he was relieved.

The Reds, in the first days of the movement, had man¬
aged to rush the outworks of the town, and day after day
spent their time trying, by blowing down house after
house, to work their way to the centre of the city. As in
the famous rising of 1934, the cathedral was the main
objective of attack and, as in that rising, the cathedral
held out with its immensely thick walls and its com¬
manding fire and enabled the Reds to be pushed back.
In revenge, in their last desperate attacks, aided by
columns of Russians and other foreigners, they trained
their artillery on the cathedral, and by constant shelling
razed its great tower level with the roof of the nave.
The whole district round Oviedo is a terrible medley of
mountain spurs and ravines, worse even than round Bilbao,
and this explains the protracted fierceness of the struggle
for the city.

94

V

THE RELIEF OF THE ALCAZAR AT TOLEDO
SEPTEMBER 27-8

T HE approach to Madrid from the west lies up the
Tagus valley. The road is on the right bank of
the Tagus, which for most of its course provides a
sufficient flank protection. The country on the left bank
of the Tagus is mountainous, and with few roads is little
adapted to large military movements. An army marching
towards Madrid from Caceres in the west has, however,
to guard its left flank from attacks coming down the
valleys in both the Sierra de Gredos and the southern
fringes of the Sierra Guadarrama. Those were exactly
the problems which confronted General Franco when he
marched his African expeditionary force, which with the
addition of local volunteers numbered barely 20,000 men,
to the relief of Toledo and the assault on Madrid.

Engaged in the Tagus valley, he had to safeguard his
flank, and therefore he called on General Mola to pnsh
into the Gredos mountains and free the two main valleys,
that of the Puerto del Pico and that leading to St. Martin
Yaldeiglesias. It was only as these operations were carried
out that his main force was able to proceed. The capture
of the Pico pass preceded the relief of Toledo; the freeing
of the St. Martin Valdeiglesias road followed a few days
afterwards. All these operations were exceedingly ven¬
turesome, but the Reds at this stage showed so little
courage and initiative that General Franco and his officers
felt they could afford to take risks.

95

4

THE SPANISH WAR

Before describing the Toledo and Madrid campaign
which I followed from day to day, it is necessary to dwell
for a minute on the naval situation which so long restricted
the revictualling, and above all the reinforcement, of the
brilliant column of African irregulars and of the Spanish
Legion, all of whom had their depots and their training
grounds across the sea. g

In July when the movement broke out the largest part
of the Spanish fleet was concentrated—its annual
manoeuvres just over—in Carthagena harbour. For some
reason or other the Navy had been rather neglected when
the movement was being prepared in secret, and the
result was that though the majority of officers sympa¬
thised with the rising, committees of sailors took possession
of the ships, massacred some three hundred officers out of
hand, and imprisoned an equal number. A retired officer,
Captain Manuel Buiza, took command of the now Red
fleet for the Government with the rank of admiral. He
had under his command one large battleship, the Jaime
Primero, three cruisers, the Cervantes, Libertad, and
Mendez Nunez, twelve large destroyers, three torpedo
boats, and eleven submarines.

The Nationalists at Ferrol and at Cadiz had managed
after a superhuman fight to retain controlof one battleship,
the Espana (since sunk by hitting a mine off Santander),
four cruisers, the Canarias, Baleares, Almirante Cervera
and Republic a, one modern destroyer, the Velasco, and a
few quite obsolete gunboats. Two of the Nationalist
cruisers, however, were in dock and not ready for sea.

The result was that clearly at the outset the command
of the sea belonged to the Reds. General Franco in
the early days was obliged to bring his African troops
across by ’plane because he could not trust them on the

96

THE RELIEF OF THE ALCAZAR AT TOLEDO

sea. Only once, on August 5, were five transports carrying
three thousand 'men able to force this blockade. On the
other hand the Red fleet was able to protect the passage
and landing of a large force which intended to overrun
the island of Majorca. This attempt was defeated, but
the Red fleet had played its part without failure.

In September, however, the activity of the Nationalist
fleet began to make itself felt. The ships which had been
in dry-dock or even in course of construction had been
hurriedly made seaworthy. The cruiser Cervera was
able to co-operate in the capture of San Sebastian, while
the Velasco burnt the petrol tanks of Bilbao. By this time
the cruiser Canarias was also fitted out and, accompanied
by the Cervera , steamed for the Straits of Gibraltar.
There, on September 29, the two cruisers surprised the
Red blockade patrol of destroyers, sinking one and
forcing the other to seek refuge in Casablanca harbour.
This was the turning point of the war at sea. The
Velasco sank the last remaining submarine on the Atlantic
coast, and since then the Red ships have hardly ever dared
even to put to sea. Their engines have been neglected,
their crews are perpetually in a state of semi-mutiny, and
their officers are without energy or else are incapable.
Nationalist ships have been able to blockade Bilbao; Red
commerce and Red supply ships have been held up.
Valuable stores of equipment and uniforms purchased by
the Reds have gone to swell the supplies of the National
ordnance department. I have seen thousands of Nation¬
alist soldiers wearing American army great-coats which
had been bought in Mexico for the Reds, but which had
changed their destination on the high seas.

There is no doubt but that the fact of the command
of the seas changing hands at the end of September and

97

THE SPANISH WAR

from being Red becoming Nationalist, bad a major
influence on tbe conduct of the war.

The primary military objective of the columns of
General Franco’s expeditionary force marching up the
Tagus valley was undoubtedly Madrid. But in war,
particularly civil war, sentiment also plays its part, and
the wiser dictates of sound strategy had to give way before
the imperative political and national duty of rescuing the
garrison of the Alcazar. This medieval palace, or rather
fortress, a great square building with massive walls com¬
pleted by Charles the Fifth, had been held against
repeated attacks by the Reds since July 19, by a small body
of officers, Civil Guards, and volunteers, together with a
handful of cadets following holiday courses in the famous
Academy. Little was known of what was happening in
Toledo. Time after time the Reds had announced the
capture of the Alcazar and the massacre of its little
garrison, but time after time the Nationalist war ’planes
flying over the city were able to assure themselves that it
was still holding out and that the red and gold banner
was still flying from its topmost roof. It was known that
there was little food, but those who were acquainted with
Colonel Moscardo, the officer in charge of its defence,
declared that whatever happened he would never sur¬
render but would rather die buried under the ruins of
the great palace. Brave words like this have often been
spoken, but in this case they came nearer the literal truth
than many times before in history. The defence and the
relief of the Alcazar at Toledo are both of them feats
rarely rivalled in military history and, as examples of
unselfish devotion to duty and exemplary bravery, are
worthy of being cited, in histories yet to be written, as
signal examples for future generations.

98

THE RELIEF OF THE ALCAZAR AT TOLEDO

The troops of the African expeditionary force, when I
reached the Tagus valley from San Sebastian, had made
much progress since I had last seen them at Merida and
Badajoz on August 14. The operations from Merida
had been rapid and daring. They were described from
day to day in the Daily Mail at the time by Mr. Paul
Bewsher, who, when he could be persuaded to speak, had
a fund of hair-raising stories of his experiences in the
battle line in the company of an Italian friend, Signor
Benedetti, another well-known journalist. “We used,”
he told me, “simply to drive to the front, and when we saw
a battery firing or a machine-gun in position, we would
walk to the nearest officer and question him. ‘What is
that village?’ ‘Oh, Santa Ollala.’ ‘Good. Where are
your first troops? What, down there in that glen? Well,
you won’t take Santa Ollala till this afternoon?’ And we
would then drive back to the nearest town, Talavera de
la Reina, say, for a hurried lunch, a hurried message put on
the cable, and then back by the same road to enter Santa
Ollala at the same time as the first troops of the Legion
or the first Moors, shouting their war cries.”

But often things did not go quite so easily as all that,
an d Paul Bewsher was less ready to speak of occasions when
he had to ditch his car to avoid shelling, and wait two
hours lying fiat in a shell-hole until the Red bombardment
had finished and he could continue his progress to the
rear with his dispatch for his newspaper.

Two days before I reached Talavera de la Reina, Mr.
Bewsher had been present at the capture of Maqueda,
a key position, on the fine of march to Toledo, and he
had been able by his presence in the front line to obtain
an exclusive story of the fighting which was not available
to anybody else for more than twenty-four hours. The

99

THE SPANISH WAR

nomination of General Varela to command the columns
marching on Toledo, and the hurried constitution of
a Press office at Talavera de la Reina, changed entirely
the face of things, and such personal and unaccompanied
trips to the front—with their risks, but with their advan¬
tages—as we had been able to make at Merida, Badajoz,
Talavera, and Maqueda, were soon officially banned
and became in practice very rare and difficult.

To relieve Toledo, General Varela, now in command of
the expeditionary force under General Franco, had to
turn half right from Maqueda and strike for the banks of
the Tagus, there distant some 45 miles from the main
Madrid road. It was hazardous because, though the
road from Avila to Talavera through the Puerto del Pico
had been seized, the foothills of the Gredos were still
strongly held by the Reds, who also controlled all the
upper waters of the Alberche and had scattered detach¬
ments all along his line of march, holding villages barely
three thousand yards from his sole lines of communication.
I have spoken on the question of these tactics both with
General Franco, who ordered them, and General Varela,
who carried them out. Both declared bluntly that the
whole march was fantastically wrong from the text-book
point of view. Both of them, however, defended the
action they took, on the ground of the imperative necessity
to capture Toledo, and on the ground that at that moment
they were dealing with enemy forces which were badly
led and which were incapable of taking the initiative
and manoeuvring. To such a clumsy foe they were
opposing the best troops of Spain and troops accustomed
to taking -risks..

On myway from Burgos to the southern front, I drove
over the Pico pass and found that I was the first journalist

100

THE RELIEF OF THE ALCAZAR AT TOLEDO

to have taken that road since it had been cleared of Reds.
General Franco used cavalry for these mountain opera¬
tions, and they were a great success. Two brigades of
cavalry with one brigade of mechanised and lorry-carried
riflemen composed the forces of General (then Colonel)
Monasterio. Their first feat was to capture the Red
positions at the Puerto del Pico. Here the road runs

SKETCH MAP SHOWING LINE OF ADVANCE OF TOLEDO
RELIEF FORCE

through, a series of narrow defiles, till just before it
the plunge down the pass to reach, miles away, the Tagus
valley and Talavera, it passes between two immense
shoulders of rock which tower two hundred feet above
its level. It was a position which could have been held
by a hundred men against a brigade. The Reds had
placed artillery, which they had hoisted with immense
difficulty, on the two shoulders of rock, and thus com¬
manded the winding road and the defiles for some eight
miles. On the road itself elaborate defence positions had
been built and were occupied by some five hundred men.

ioi

THE SPANISH WAR

Colonel Monasterio sent two squadrons to capture the
pass, and they took it with the loss of half a dozen men.
He told me the story of the fight when I was passing
through his headquarters at Avila on my way south.

“I obtained the services of an old hunter’s guide. You
may know that the Sierra de Gredos is known for a
variety of mountain goat which roams at very great
altitudes and is extremely difficult to approach. Hunting
parties always use the services of these guides who know
every inch of the land. He made me a map of the posi¬
tions held by the Reds and assured me that he could
take my men, by paths which their horses could climb, to
points where, dismounting, they would be able to attack
the two artillery positions from behind. I myself would
attack along the road the moment the two flank parties
fired rockets showing they were in position.

“Everything went according to plan. After six hours’
climbing in the mountains the two squadrons reached
their assigned posts and attacked at three in the morning.
There was hardly a fight at all. My troopers, stumbling
and sliding, rushed down the slope to the enemy guns,
reaching the position with ease. At this point they met
with no resistance and shot only half a dozen men, the
rest racing off down the path they had cut to the road
in the defile below. Quickly machine-guns were put in
position, and the Red barricades and redoubts in the pass
itself were brought under fire just as dawn was breaking
and before the Reds realised what had happened. At the
same time, my own advance guard came up and began a
frontal attack. The Reds again ran away without figh tin g
About a hundred of them were shot down, but over a
hundred more killed themselves in the haste of their
retreat by falling over the precipices.”

102

THE RELIEF OF THE ALCAZAR AT TOLEDO

When I reached the Puerto del Pico there were still
signs of the fight on every side—abandoned equipment and
broken rifles. It was difficult to understand how the
Reds had ever allowed themselves to be surprised in such
a position where the advantages of natural fortifications
were all in their favour. On the other hand, it was easy
to realise what a disaster surprise and defeat w T ould be in
such a place. The Puerto del Pico is, to my mind, one
of the most beautiful passes in Europe. Great peaks rise
to some eight thousand feet on either side, and the pass
opens out on a semicircle of mountains with the steepest
slopes. The road, with a score of hairpin bends, winds
its way slowly from side to side of the semicircle to drop
fifteen hundred feet in ten miles by motor-car, but barely
two miles as the crow flies. Crossing the road both at
the top and the bottom of the pass runs one of the longest
stretches of well-paved and w r ell-preserved Roman roads
I have seen. It zigzags down the mountain-side like an
immense staircase, and can be traced practically intact all
the way to Arenas de San Pedro, fifteen miles distant.
The peasants with their mule trains use it to the exclu¬
sion of the road, which they dislike owing to the passing
motor-cars and its greater length. Along this road which
was a famous Roman highway must have passed on horse¬
back or in their mule litters all the great Roman generals
who ruled over Spain, with their retinues, their slaves, and
their escorts.

On either side are mountains tipped with eternal snow,
and then come the great grey and purple slopes which
simply glow with colour under the autumn Castilian sun,
until gradually the green, first of scrub oak and then of
pasture land, invades them. In the narrow valley below
a tiny stream runs, the Roman road crossing it by a high

103

THE SPANISH WAR

arched bridge, and there are silvery olive groves with here
and there the darker green of orange and lemon trees.
Clustered together are groups of houses, first Cuevas del
Valle and then Mombeltran, with sombre red-tiled
irregular roofs and low, deep eaves jutting out over the
balconies which give an Alpine appearance to these valley
dwellings. Mombeltran has a beautiful square castle, be¬
longing to the Duque de Albuquerque, but now, unfortu¬
nately, in sad disrepair; from there the road winds on to
Arenas de San Pedro, the scene of a terrible massacre by
the Reds during August. It was captured by General
Varela’s troops in the middle of September, thus effecting
a liaison with Monasterio’s cavalry coming down from
the Pico pass.

I have crossed the Sierra de Gredos over a score of times
in fair weather and in foul, and I have never tired of its
constantly changing beauty, now outlined in a clear blue
sky and now with a black, snow-menacing canopy of
clouds overhead and a bitter wind blowing with almost
incredible strength. On one such day I was going back
to Avila, with Mr. Victor Console, the famous photo¬
grapher, who was anxious to confide some important
pictures to the official courier so that they should reach
the French frontier speedily, when the snow caught us
before we reached the summit of the pass. We had no
chains for our car wheels, but managed to get out of the
Pico pass all right only to find a snow-covered mountain
plateau in front of us, and finally, to get hopelessly in¬
volved in a snow drift on the Menga pass. It was bitterly
cold, and there was the prospect of remaining there for
many hours or else going on foot to Mengamunoz, a small
village about five miles along the road. We were just
making up our minds to abandon the car when a mule

104

THE RELIEF OF THE ALCAZAR AT TOLEDO

train came in sight. The muleteers quickly understood
our difficulty and, with five mules harnessed to the car,
they pulled it out of the drift. They proudly refused to
take any money, but timidly requested Victor Console,
who had taken a number of photographs of the incident,
to send them some copies of his pictures.

From Arenas de San Pedro the road speedily joins up
with the great Madrid-Merida highway, known as the
Estremadura road, for it is the best motor road to Seville
and the south. Talavera de la Reina, the scene of one of
Wellington’s most famous Spanish victories, is only a few
miles from this junction.

Talavera may be very old, it may be typically Spanish,
but it is certainly not a beautiful or attractive town. I
say this with great fear of offending its alcalde, General
Emilio Barrio, who is one of the most amiable Spaniards
I have ever met. When we arrived in Talavera, a little
Press unit composed of two cars and three journalists,
he received us with courtesy, and as the two hotels were
full sent his town beadle to requisition rooms for our bene¬
fit. But Talavera is very primitive, and this condition was
naturally added to by the Red terror which had lasted
for nearly two months. Much had been destroyed, there
was a scarcity of food, of wine, and even water, and this
was rendered all the more perceptible by the fact that it
was then the base headquarters for all General Varela’s
columns, numbering some fifteen thousand men. In
many of the streets the drainage system consisted merely
of a central gutter or stream often a yard wide and a foot
and a half deep. Into this open drain everything was
thrown, and the resultant smell can perhaps be better
imagined than described. For days on end the water
supply was strictly limited for cooking purposes. The

IO S

THE SPANISH WAR

drinking water, when it was available, was of a greasy,
opaque appearance and had been very liberally chlorinated.
Even weeks after the capture of Talavera from the Reds
the food was extremely bad. It seemed impossible to
persuade any cook not to use immense quantities of
rancid oil and also huge amounts of garlic.

Finally with Jean d’Hospital, a French journalist of
talent whom I have already mentioned, we formed a small
mess, taking an apartment in a private house on the
station road. There in a small, over-furnished dining¬
room we had some of the very best meals served anywhere
in Spain. We used to invite staff officers and others to
lunch or to dine with us, and they said that not even
General Franco’s table was quite so good. The landlord
of the house had kept a fashionable restaurant just outside
Madrid on the Corunna road, and he used to wait on us
in a white jacket while the maid merely passed him the
dishes. He was a man who had led a strange career,
first being a professor of philosophy before devoting his
attention to the culinary arts. He was calm and self-
possessed and never seemed to lose his presence of mind.
I remember one day when six large Russian bombers
came and, trying to hit the railway station distant about
two hundred yards with big bombs weighing nearly half
a ton, dropped sixteen of them in fields right in front of
our house. Four fell quite near, and the displacement of
air blew the windows in besides removing a substantial
portion of the roof. D’Hospital, our guest—a Spanish
major—and myself flattened ourselves on the ground
against the main wall until all was over and then, brush¬
ing the plaster from our clothes, went out to see what
damage had been done. Actually one old man and his
mule were found dead, though with no trace of outward

106

THE RELIEF OF THE ALCAZAR AT TOLEDO

injury. Both, of them had been killed by the shock.
When we returned we found our dueno or butler-
landlord had laid a fresh cloth and was calmly waiting
to serve us with the next dish. C£ I am afraid , 55 he said,
“you will be cold with no window-panes. But I have
another house which is not inhabited, and I will get a
workman this afternoon to transfer two windows from
there to replace those which have been blown out here . 55
That was the first of many air raids, but the old man never
showed a tremor of apprehension or allowed anything to
interfere with his attention to our well-being.

General Yarela started his Toledo campaign with some
eight thousand men of the Tercio, as the Spanish Legion
is called, and with about six thousand Regulares or Moors
and two or three thousand artillery and other troops.
They were divided into a variable number of columns
commanded by such men as Colonel Yague, Colonel
Asensio, Lieutenant-Colonels the Duque de Telia, Barron,
Delgado and Majors Castejon and Mizzian. They were
all fine soldiers and all of them exceedingly friendly.
The last-named, Major Mizzian, was a Moroccan who had
passed through the cadet school of Toledo and was one
of the first to enter both Toledo and Madrid. During
the long campaign the banderas of the Legion and the
tabors of the Regulares were replenished several times
over. But the influence of the few old soldiers who were
left and of the survivors among the officers and sergeants
was so powerful that General Varela assured me he had
never noticed any decrease in the fighting and tactical
value of these regiments.

Throughout the war none of these men were ever
called upon to march a mile except when actively engaged
in fighting. They were carried by motor-lorries and motor

107

THE SPANISH WAR

omnibuses right up to the limit of effective machine-gun
range, and there and there only they began to move
forward on foot. The result was that the units were
kept in a much fresher condition than would have other¬
wise been the case. The Legion and the Moors also kept
very attenuated outpost lines, and the great majority of
the men were thus able to live in greater comfort some
distance behind the rather elastic front line.

The first night at Talavera, my French friend and
myself spent as the guests of the good people on whom
we had been quartered by the alcalde. I learnt that
they were his cousins. They were installed in a strange,
rambling house built over a brewery and an ice factory,
those being their property. We had some iced beer
which was very welcome and were then invited to dine
with them. The family consisted of the husband, the wife,
who looked very sad and worried, and three good-looking
daughters. I understand that the husband had been
forced to pay to the Reds as much as £3,000 so that his
property should not be destroyed and he or his family
molested. During the whole period of Red occupation
he made beer and ice for them for nothing. My French
friend d’Hospital, who was always the president of our
little mess, produced some bottles of fair Spanish wine,
which were much appreciated as none was left in the
town.

We were seated at table finishing our meal about
midnight—dinner is always a late function in Spain—
when there arose fearful shouts from the streets. It was
the war chant of the Moorish soldiers, broken by the
screams of frightened women. I realised how deeply
fear had bitten into those Spanish families when I saw
wife and children huddle in a corner of the room while

108

THE RELIEF OF THE ALCAZAR AT TOLEDO

the father went round to inspect doors and shutters.
We knew it was only the passage of a Moorish regiment,
and d’Hospital who, having commanded a French
Moorish company, knew their ways, offered to go out and
see what happened. He did so, and soon returned with
one of the Spanish officers of the Moorish unit who
reassured everybody and told them that they had no
more devoted defenders than the Moorish Regulares. I
had a nice clean room in a modern wing of the building,
a room which I often regretted. There was a bath
attached, but as the water was not running it did not serve
me much.

The next morning we started out very early, Antoine,
our chauffeur, grumbling loudly about his room, which
had apparently not been as clean as ours. We obtained
a pass from Lieutenant-Colonel Peris de Vargas to go to
the headquarters of Colonel Yague’s column, which was
supposed to be somewhere near Torrijos on the straight
road between Maqueda and Toledo. We drove as fast
as the repeated stragglers and Civil Guard posts would
allow us.

It was indeed necessary to drive fast. The September
sun in the Tagus valley beats down fiercely for ma ny
hours a day, and the road all the way to Maqueda was
strewn with bodies. The Reds had had several fines of
trenches, well defended with barbed wire belts and
machine-gun pits, neatly concealed in the olive groves
regularly every five miles or so. These trenches had been
defended, and then when they had been turned or pierced
all their occupants—foolish, misguided men, ignorant of
the very alphabet of military tactics—had rushed to the
main road hoping to find their motor transport which
would carry them to the rear. The transport was never

109

THE SPANISH WAR

there, and the rolling contours of the road, now dipping
and now rising in a gentle swell, were covered by
the Nationalist machine-guns. The desperate fugitives
crowded into the ditches on either side of the road and
there they were shot down in their hundreds. In some
places they were piled one on top of the other. Elsewhere
they lay in a continuous row, head touching feet, for
hundreds of yards. In the fields the peasants, who still
remained, a mere handful of scared old men and women,
had pulled them from the middle of the fields and had
laid them in neat piles in the field tracks. The stench
from these rotting bodies was sickening, and the ghastly
spectacle lasted for some twenty miles. Here and there
I saw dead mules and horses, but these were few and far
between as neither Reds nor Nationalists, save in excep¬
tional cases, used much horse or mule transport. Lorries
and cars, some merely broken down and stripped of
their wheels, some shot to pieces, and the majority burnt
out, were the transport skeletons of the Spanish Civil
War.

At one road crossing there was a Red armoured car, a
rough-and-ready thing, made in some iron factory of
Madrid and bearing the sickle and hammer to show its
origin. There were five dead men around it. They were
all black in the face and their bodies were twisted and
set in their agony. One man had apparently been trying
to leave the car and was caught up by the hinge which
still held his body-strap, holding him suspended half in
and half out of the door. The story of what had taken
place was simple. The armoured car had stormed up
the side road leading three others to try to cut off a
bandera of the Legion advancing to capture Santa Ollala.
The legionaries had stepped back behind hedges and

no

THE RELIEF OF THE ALCAZAR AT TOLEDO

hidden in ditches until the car was level with them, when
they assailed it with their bombs. As soon as these had
exploded three men rushed up to it behind. The Red
officer in charge opened the trap-door fox a second to
see what had happened, and three bombs were thrown
into the ungainly steel-clad vehicle. There was a terrible
rush to leave the car before the bombs exploded, and all
those who got out were shot down at once. The man
half in and half out of the armoured car, as well as one
man whose body was invisible inside, were killed by the
bombs exploding.

At Santa Ollala I found the village very badly damaged.
Immediately after it had been captured by the Nation¬
alists, Red ’planes had come and bombed it. Antoine,
searching round, found an alley-way in which the houses
on either side had collapsed over two cars which had
evidently been taken there by their chauffeurs who
believed they would be safer in the narrow, confined space.
Antoine w T as busy digging away to reach the cars, in his
perpetual search for spare parts, when I pointed out to
him two things. Firstly, that the dead bodies of the
drivers were still in the front seats crashed under a ton
and a half of stone and bricks and, secondly, that the
position was just the one which he himself invariably
chose when the alarm of an air raid was given. These
remarks cooled his ardour, and when I had made my
necessary inquiries I found him back in his seat waiting
to drive on, and had not, as usual, to sound the hooter
repeatedly for him. The cars and the dead bodies
remained for over five weeks. The same could be said of
all the bodies lying along the road and the other bodies
which were to strew the road first to Toledo and then to
Madrid.

in

THE SPANISH WAR

I questioned many staff officers as to why bodies were
not burnt or buried quicker, pointing out that at any
moment it was bad for the hygiene and morale of the
troops, but especially so during the hot Spanish Septem¬
ber weather. They replied, and I quickly realised their
answer was true, that they had no spare labour to set
aside for the job of grave digging or of otherwise disposing
of corpses. The peasants who turned up were few and
mostly aged, and the work could not be imposed on them.
Able-bodied town labour, which was very scarce, was being
impressed as fast as possible for the vitally necessary work
of building aerodromes. When finally the work of getting
rid of the corpses began it was a ghastly sight to see the
funeral pyres lit all over the country for miles and miles
round. A special corps of men, assigned to the task for
some breach of discipline or other, equipped with masks
and great rubber gauntlets, pulled the bodies into heaps
and, covering them with straw and pitch from the stock
used for road repairing, made gigantic bonfires of them.
They smouldered rather than burned, and for days one
could see thin and evil-smelling wisps of smoke rising
from blackened heaps every fifty yards or so along the
roadway. Just approaching Torrijos, there were the
bodies of two enormous pigs. I have never seen hogs
quite as big. They lay there, an abomination to the nose
for three weeks. When they were set on fire they burnt
with a great white flame, cracking and exploding every
now and then, until one could see the incandescent glow
and the flames roaring inside the cage formed by their
rib bones. Not far distant a peasant’s cart harnessed to
two black horses had come to grief just before the
Guadarrama river on the road to Toledo. The dead
peasants were buried quickly, owing to local piety and

112

THE RELIEF OF THE ALCAZAR AT TOLEDO

tlie friendly hand of some neighbour. One horse was
half in the field and was burnt. The other horse remained
in the road. First it was a black form clearly identifiable,
and then gradually, owing to the heat which made it rot
fast, and owing to the constant passage of motor lorries,
it lost shape and flattened out. When I last saw it, one
could only see a dark mark deeply encrusted in the road,
all that was left of the dead horse. The peasant must have
been proud of Ms pair of black horses, but he too was
dead and was not there to grieve over their sad fate.

On a little hill to the left of the road going to Torrijos
first, and then ultimately to Toledo, I saw a number of
artillery officers taking observations with an escort of
Moorish cavalry. They all received me exceedingly well,
and while the artillery officers were pointing out the
Red positions the Moors hurried off to brew me some
mint tea. I was surprised to find out for the first time
that the Reds were so near us, and when I remembered
the battery of short-range four-inch guns wMch was
standing at Maqueda, one half firing towards the foothills
of the Credos and the others up the continuation of
the Talavera road towards Madrid, I began to marvel
at the risks which were being taken. I was shown the
little road which comes from Santa Cruz de Retamar
and also runs towards the Guadarrama river, and was told,
that all those villages were Red. They were actually only
captured weeks after the fall of Toledo, and yet they were
no more than some five thousand yards distant on our
flank. That was why, I was told, the artillery observation
officers and every head of a column moved with a cavalry
escort, and that was also why all the stores were brought
up in protected convoys.

My mint tea was by now brought to me in a very grimy

i*3

THE SPANISH WAR

glass which had most likely been used by all the men of
the escort, but I knew that my duty was to drink it down,
regardless of consequences, and therefore I acquitted
myself in a manner to draw the approval of the very digni¬
fied Moorish troop sergeant. I must take this opportunity
of saying that I have seen the Spanish Moorish troops at
close quarters for many months, and I have never seen or
heard the slightest evidence which supports wild charges
of cruelty made against them. Undoubtedly in battle
they are ferocious and they kill the enemy who opposes
them. They do not often take prisoners, but no body of
men in an actual fight is obliged by the normal rules and
customs of war to accept a prisoner. Once men have been
taken prisoners the Moors, so far as I have heard, have
never massacred them or even molested them. Women
and children also have never suffered from them. As far
as this is concerned and as to their general demeanour,
I have found the Moorish soldiers great gentlemen. On
the other hand, it must be admitted that they loot. If
they find empty houses they make the easy excuse that
the vanished inhabitants must be Reds and so they take
everything they can find which they like. But they do not
destroy property of any kind uselessly. I was told that
they objected to the method of warfare necessitated in
the University city by which certain houses were set on
fire to force the Reds to leave. They thought that to be
a useless destruction of valuable property. This line of
conduct has caused them to hate the Reds who have been
guilty of wanton destruction. Another thing for which
they cannot forgive the Reds has been the destruction
of churches and Church property. “That is their faith,”
they say, “and yet these miscreants do not hesitate to
commit sacrilege. It is as if we were to set fire to a

114

THE RELIEF OF THE ALCAZAR AT TOLEDO

mosque. It is certainly Allah’s wish, that we punish
them.” The Spanish Moors are already deeply attached,
first to the Spanish Army and then to their own regi¬
mental officers, of whom they are exceedingly proud, and
if anything could have strengthened that attachment it
is the fact that the Reds against whom they are fighting
have burnt and murdered so brutally.

I was told that General Varela was in Torrijos but that
I could not go there until I had a special permit, and I
was promised that one would be sent back to Talavera
for me on the morrow. The car was turned round, and
Antoine, not reassured by what he had seen, which
he, as a French reservist, was too good a soldier not to
understand, started back at breakneck speed for Talavera
de la Reina. On account of the ghastly succession of
corpses this speed would have been welcome, but there were
shell holes and mine craters to be considered, so that it
was necessary to tell him to drive more slowly. “That is
all very well,” was his reply, “but the Reds are on both
sides, and if they have any sense they will try and cut the
road at night and hold up the supply train.” Fortunately
for us the Reds apparently did not have much sense, and
as a matter of fact the road was only twice cut, and that
long after Toledo had fallen, and the Reds each time had
apparently lost their way and did not know where they
were going. They did damage, however, and got away,
so it is easy to imagine the harm they might have done
had they had good and energetic leaders.

Next morning we started off again and reached Torrijos,
a big, straggling village of New Castile, with immense
farm buildings and a dozen private houses of some pre¬
tensions. We followed the road until we came up with
General Varela and his advance guard at a hamlet known

“5

THE SPANISH WAR

as Rielves. We were by then half a dozen journalists,
including a cinema operator, a charming American named
Menken. I pitied him when I saw the weight he was
carrying through the almost tropical heat.

On the sky-line, limned by the scorching sun, were the
church towers of Bargas. That village was Red and to-day
it was only to be masked and not taken. Actually, though
it stood there so near and so plainly visible, it was not
taken until after Toledo had been captured, and then only
as a preliminary to the march on to Madrid along the
Toledo-Madrid road.

There were batteries of heavy and light artillery firing
against the Reds on either side of the road. They were
not firing fast, but continuously, and made quite a warlike
racket. It was evident their shells were falling on the
great red sandstone bluff marking the opposite bank of
the Guadarrama river, which flows into the Tagus a few
miles farther west. The course of the river could be
guessed by the line of green poplars lazily nodding their
heads in the breeze. Through glasses it was impossible
to detect any trace of the Reds, though it seemed strange
that they should leave so valuable a line of defence as
a ravined stream without artillery and machine-gun fire
beating on it. At two o’clock in the afternoon the sign
was given by General Varela for his staff to advance
down to the line of the river. The General, with Colonel
Asensio and two staff officers, climbed on to the back of
an armoured lorry which set off at full speed, and we, who
were under the charge of the indefatigable Captain
Aguilera, were told to spread out into infantry formation
m the ploughed fields on the road, at least until we had
passed the crest of the hill and were on the down slope
to the river. r

ii 6

THE RELIEF OF THE ALCAZAR AT TOLEDO

I was still feeling the strain of the motor-car accident
which I related earlier, and I found the going across
ploughed fields for some five thousand yards very heavy.
Everything comes to an end, however, and after an hour
and a half’s trudging we reached the bant of the Guadar-
rama. The Reds had blown up the central arch of the
high bridge which crosses the wide bed of the river.
Fortunately, as in so many Spanish rios 9 there was not
very much water. Taking our boots off, we found we
could get across without the water reaching higher than
our knees. The stream was deliciously cool and we all
felt the benefit of our wade. When we got across, how¬
ever, it was not to catch a sight of Toledo, .though that
city was only fourteen thousand yards distant. The
Nationalists could not understand the complete absence
of pugnacity on the part of the Reds, and orders were
given that until a satisfactory military bridge had been
made across the river bed, one which would take tanks
and heavy artillery, the infantry was to confine itself to
holding the bridge-head, digging itself in, and organising
positions which could be held against any counter¬
offensive the Reds might make in the form of a desperate
sortie from Toledo.

General Varela himself and his staff were soon back on
the north side of the river, and at that moment the Red
’planes put in an appearance. About four hundred men
were then at work digging new road approaches to the
river, while motor-lorries were being brought up carrying
timber for the passage-way which was to be made right
down at water-level. Whistles sounded and there was a
sauve qui feut. The General and most of his staff took
shelter under one of the arches still erect of the bridge.
Not bad, but' still not very good. Many of the men simply

117

THE SPANISH WAR

waded into the rushes and stood still. That was perhaps
the best, as a bomb falling in the river would have a very
localised influence. I found a small ditch, almost shaped
like a grave, which was some five feet deep, and that made
an excellent, indeed an ideal, shelter for myself and three
companions. Those Red ’planes flew over us in pairs
continuously for about three hours and dropped, accord-
to staff calculations, some one hundred and seventy
light and heavy bombs. It was an unpleasant experience,
but in my little “grave” I felt secure from anything but
that most unlikely thing, a direct hit.

Night was falling when finally they dropped their last
bombs and flew away. Ambulances were speeding up
the road, and the dead and dying were being carried away.
Not a heavy casualty list, I was told, only ten dead and
twenty-five wounded for all that noise and all those
planes. The General and his staff were safe, as not a
shgle bomb had hit the already wrecked bridge. Sen¬
sible Antoine, when he knew we had reached the Guadar-
rama bridge, had nosed forward cautiously with the car.
My friend d Hospital’s chauffeur had followed suit. The
air raids had kept them back for a little, but when dusk
began to fall they had again pushed forward and, leaving
the river, we were hailed by them and both felt grate¬
ful to our men for their initiative, as we had thought
we would have to walk back as far as we had come. In

, orr y os we fixed on some local legal luminary’s
house as our headquarters, and there we wrote our mes¬
sages. D’Hospital, seeing that I was tired out and knowing
how the terrible condition of the road as far as Maqueda
hurt my back, offered to take my messages to Talavera
for me “on condition,” he said, “that you see I have
a good dinner when I return.”

118

THE RELIEF OF THE ALCAZAR AT TOLEDO

The first thing I felt I wanted was a wash, but 1 could
not find any water. Menken, the cinema operator, took
me in tow, however, like the good fellow he is, and soon
we were knocking at the great double doors of a large
house in a side street. A fat but dignified old Spanish
lady* answered, and when we told her what we wanted
led us along a great passage into an immense whitewashed
room. The walls were hung with pictures of Saints and
Biblical subjects, and side by side stood two huge four-
poster beds with great black twisted columns. In the
corner was an exiguous wash basin, but there was plenty
of fresh water, and as I had soap and a towel we had a great
wash. The good lady trotted in and out despite Menken’s
half-hearted attempt to shut the door. She told us that
she and her two sisters were all the adults left of the
family. Two daughters had been killed after suffering all
sorts of indignities—we thought it better not to inquire
what these were—and the four men of the house had
also been killed. “We are three old women, now,” she
said, “and we have eleven small children to look after.
How can we do it?” And out in the patio and in the
corridor sure enough there was a crowd of laughing, crying
children, many of them just big enough to hang to her
generously proportioned apron, as she showed us to the
door, having given us a great stone flask of wine as well
as a pitcher of fresh well water.

In the house we had picked, we decided to eat in the
large dining-room where there was a big, heavy, black
oak table and a number of tall black chairs upholstered in
worked leather. There were no spoons or forks, but plenty
of plates and glasses, most of which on a cursory examina¬
tion appeared to be clean. Four candles stuck in bottles
gave sufficient light, and we were just beginning to open

119

THE SPANISH WAR

our pocket knives and compare the tinned provisions
we had brought with us—Knickerbocker of the New
York American always had the most handsome supplies
and always generously shared them—when there was a
tap on the door and a Spanish Legion sergeant appeared.
“I see, Caballeros ” he said after a preliminary salute, “that
you are preparing to have dinner here. Tinned food is
but cold comfort after the tiring day that you have had,
and I would like to ask you to be the guests of the Legion
for dinner to-night. If you would but wait half an hour
or so, while our soup, which is even now on our camp fire,
cooks, we will serve you dinner.”

We had a little sherry, and just as d’Hospital arrived
back from his journey to the telegraph office the Legion¬
aries served us dinner. They brought in soup in a great
covered tureen. It was thick and hot and good. When
that was finished we had a typical Spanish stew of potatoes,
beans and cabbage with little pieces of sausage and meat.
It appeared that many hen roosts had been raided, but
the chicken in the stew was not of the tenderest. Then
came tinned tunny with a salad of red and green sweet
chillies, and finally roast pork. The pork, too, was not
very tender though well roasted. But as the piglets had
been running about that very morning it was not sur¬
prising that the meat was slightly tough. With apologies
for having no sweet the Legion waiters brought us in
some piping hot coffee. I knew we could not offer to
pay them for their good services, for the Spanish Legion,
luce the French, is very touchy on such matters, so we
merely invited the Spanish sergeant and his helpers
to take a glass of sherry with us, and after thanking
them drank to Spain and the Legion.” They were
delighted.

120

THE RELIEF OF THE ALCAZAR AT TOLEDO

There were no good sleeping arrangements, merely
empty beds with wire mattresses, and at first Reynolds
Packard, the American journalist and correspondent of
the United Press, and myself decided to wrap up in our
blankets and sleep in the open. M. d’Hospital curled up
in his car which closed well. My own was occupied by
our two chauffeurs, while Knickerbocker and the others
chose the mattresses.

It was a picturesque night setting. Occasionally from
the distance a deep boom spoke of some guns firing miles
away, possibly against the Alcazar, or the rattle of a
machine-gun much nearer told of some movement in the
enemy outpost line which had called for a sharp retort
from the Nationalist posts on the Rio Guadarrama. A
few yards away in the middle of the street a great camp
fire was burning, and sitting or sleeping round it were
the men of the Legion’s main guard on the village, some
fifty in number. Every hour a sergeant would call out
some names and men would rise quietly, wrap themselves
in their cloaks and, rifle in hand, vanish for a patrol or
for some sentry post. In another house near by there
was another section of the Legion who were gently
singing Andalusian songs. Overhead the stars gleamed
bright.

Reynolds Packard and myself found sleep difficult, and
for a long time we remained awake exchanging reminis¬
cences, and then suddenly we heard the piercing notes of
the Spanish reveille and awoke to find it dawn.

Again that day we went to the front line across the
Guadarrama. This time we found that a good causeway
had been picketed across the river. Piles had been driven
into the sand and boards closely hammered into position
so that traffic could get across safely if not with ease. But

121

THE SPANISH WAR

General Varela felt he had still another day he could
spare, and was bringing up his reinforcements, guarding
his flanks, and placing his batteries in position. Red ’planes
came again at intervals during the day, but Nationalist
chasers were in the air and they were not so persistent as
they had been on the day before.

So great was the secrecy observed at this moment by the
Nationalist High Command that there were many of us
who wondered if the assault which was being planned
would come in time to relieve Moscardo. The Alcazar,
we knew, had been closely beset since July 23, and it was
now September 24. The Reds had repeatedly announced
the fall of the great fortress palace which they had
battered with heavy artillery and mined from different
sides. Only two days before they had again given out
this report with such a wealth of circumstantial detail
that it almost seemed as if, for once, their story might be
true. A priest had visited the Alcazar, and after his
spiritual help had presented once again the Red request
that a surrender might at least save the lives of women and
children. A diplomat, almost sick with horror at the sights
he saw, had joined his appeal, but the women of the
Alcazar, fit companions of the gallant officers and soldiers
who were by their sides, had given a point-blank refusal to
any negotiations for their surrender or their release, saying,
“We will live or die with the garrison of the Alcazar.”
What was their fate? Red ’planes, we knew, had during
the past three days dropped two bombs on the palace
for every one they had dropped on the relief force. Was
anybody left alive in the Alcazar? Would General Varela
arrive in time?

At last on the Friday we were able to move forward,
marching with the very first line of the Moorish tabors

122

THE RELIEF OF THE ALCAZAR AT TOLEDO

to a point where we could actually see the roofs of Toledo
rising in the thin river mist before us, and view the Alcazar
itself.

I shall never forget that first sight of Toledo. We went
forward along a broad mule-track which ran between two
stubble fields. The banks were still green, and a tiny pale
purple flower—I could not remember its name—was
growing in profusion. On either side of us were batteries,
and overhead Red ’planes and Nationalist ’planes were
having a dog-fight. From time to time Red bombers
would appear, and then to the sound of a whistle every
one would flatten himself down on the ground and r emain
motionless. The theory, right or wrong, was that
motionless figures even in line could not be detected at
the height at which the bombers flew, whereas the slightest
motion would at once betray both the Nationalist line of
infantry and its batteries. There was nothing to be done
but to obey orders, hide one’s face in the stubble, and
watch the spiders and the ants fight for the body of a
disabled caterpillar. Finally we were allowed up again,
and cautiously two at a time to move forward to where
the Moors were lying in rough-made trenches—the front
line—looking down on Toledo.

There was the town, with a cloud of smoke hanging
over it like a canopy. There was the Tagus almost sur¬
rounding it, there its walls, and there the towers of the
cathedral. Where, however, the huge square-built Alca¬
zar with its great towers, its great facade? Could it be
that? That smoking heap of ruins? Yes, that was all
there was left of the Alcazar. Gone were the proud
towers, gone the great roof supported by the huge fa9ade
and lateral walls. Gone the noble facade and the walls
themselves. Here and there a shaft of masonry raised

123

THE SPANISH WAR

itself from that immense heap of rubble and of stones.
And so we watched, straining our eyes to catch a sight of
the red and gold flag which would tell us that Colonel
Moscardo, its gallant defender, and his garrison were still
holding out, but there was nothing we could see. Sud¬
denly, in front of the Alcazar there rose an immense
column of smoke and dust which went up like a huge
plume for some hundreds of feet in the air and then
slowly, ever so slowly, spread out so that it looked like a
gigantic inverted pyramid of fuliginous smoke. A great
boom resounded, and we knew that yet another mine had
been exploded. That meant that the Alcazar until then
was still resisting. But what damage had the mine done?
Was it not, perhaps, the last blow, which would have
shattered the walls of the cellars in which the gallant
garrison had taken refuge, and would have forced a breach
through which the Red hordes might find a way to wreak
their bloody purpose?

Sadly we turned away and in gloomy reflection began
to make our way back. It needed an incident when we
reached the six-inch batteries beside the sunken road to
relieve us of our pessimistic impressions. We were moving
along, a little column of journalists, when suddenly the
battery opened fire, directly over our heads. Most of us
ducked instinctively-—even those accustomed to artillery
fire cannot always refrain from so doing—but behind us
we saw a half a dozen visitors to the front who had done
more and who had thrown themselves flat on their faces
in the mud. We did not laugh at the moment, so as
not to offend them, but having assured them there was
no danger, hastened away round a corner to enjoy
the humour of the situation, leaving them to brush the
abundant mud from their clothes.

124

THE RELIEF OF THE ALCAZAR AT TOLEDO

The next day there was better'news, and in our billet
at Torrijos, which, though the Tillage had been swept and
cleaned, was none the more comfortable for a sudden
plague of flies—whence had they come, those flies?—we
were told by officers back from the front that Toledo was
almost surrounded, and that Moorish troops, who were
closing on the famous Visagra gate, built in 1550 and still
a formidable work, declared they had seen a flag wave
from the top of the immense “glacis” of brick and rabble
which marked where once the entry to the Alcazar had
been. Later that night other messengers came back and
said that light signals had been exchanged and that the
garrison, which knew the relief force was at hand,= was
holding out and did not fear a surprise attack.

General Varela, seated in a farmhouse, was that night
examining two Red deserters. They had come in to
surrender and had said they could tell the general exactly
where the Red batteries were situated, and also where
their barricades were being erected to prevent the
Nationalists entering the town. The general was seated
at a table, lit only by two guttering candles, as he interro¬
gated the men. A staff officer marked down the result of
their replies on a large-scale map, and General Varela,
warning the men that if their statements were not true
in every respect, they would be shot, made them repeat
time after time what they had said. The men swore they
were not Reds but had been pressed to fight. As the
information they brought tallied to a large degree with
other news the general had, they were dismissed under
guard, and then and there General Varela dictated his
orders for the next day’s assault on the town. Three
columns were to make the assault, and one column was to
guard the left flank which led to Madrid and from which

125

THE SPANISH WAR

direction the Reds might make an eleventh hour attempt
to retrieve the situation. The general knew that once his
troops were in the town the Reds would be pouring away
over the Alcantara and St. Martin bridges as fast as they
could go.

On Sunday morning the attacking columns swept for¬
ward. They had to carry several heavily fortified posi¬
tions: first, on the Madrid road the cemetery which,
standing on a slope, dominates the road for two thousand
yards. Then there was the bull-ring, the infantry
barracks, and the Tavera hospital. Some three thousand
Reds, plentifully supplied with machine-guns and rifles,
held these positions. Legionaries and Moors pushed along
in open formation, while the Nationalist artillery
drenched the Red positions with shells. At noon the
cemetery was taken—I saw it a day later, and there was
a fresh body for every tomb—and at three in the afternoon
the Tavera hospital was burning. Three hundred Reds
had shut themselves in the huge building, and it was not
until twenty-four hours later that this last redoubt was
finally stormed. The Alcazar had, however, already been
relieved.

The portion of the old wall of Toledo attacked was that
between the new Visagra gate and the Cambron gate.
The two narrow winding gateways were barricaded and
commanded by machine-gun fire from the stone houses
within. But the Moors and Legionaries scorned the low
and somewhat tumbledown walls, and with improvised
scaling ladders, torn from the houses and gardens of the
suburbs, they climbed the outer defences at a score of places
at the same time and then began to sweep the barricades
and houses clear. The next day, on the road rising from
the .■■'Visagra gate to the Puerta del Sol, I saw one house

126

THE RELIEF OF THE ALCAZAR AT TOLEDO

which, had served as a Red redoubt. Its doors and
windows were breached by hand-grenades and a dozen
ragged, bloody corpses lay in all positions, their hands
clenched as death had met them from fierce bayonet
thrust or speedier bullet. In that first rush no surrenders
were accepted, and the Reds were shot down, bombed,
or bayoneted without mercy. It was growing dusk, and
only half the city had been taken, and the heads of
columns which had forced their entrance had to strike
hard and fast. As they climbed the walls an officer of the
Legion told me that high up on a shattered shaft of wall,
all that was left of the south fa9ade of the Alcazar, they
could see a figure wave a great red and gold banner and
then disappear.

A small party of Moors led by an officer and a detach¬
ment of Legionaries were the first to climb the glacis and
present themselves before the barricade leading to the
interior of the Alcazar. They were received with mili tary
precautions. Half-way up they were challenged and only
three men were allowed to proceed. It was then nearly
dusk, and in that narrow street with its canopy of smoke
and dust it was difficult to see. The officer and two men
stumbled upwards to the rude barricade of stone and
sandbags where the black muzzles of two machine-guns
peered through. They were welcomed by a grey-faced,
bearded man who said he was the officer of the watch,
and then Colonel Moscardo, the gallant chief, himself
appeared, gaunt and ghost-like, with his grey beard and
his torn uniform. Military recognition having thus been
obtained, the two hundred men of the relief force filed in.
They were duly taken round from post to post to relieve
the tired garrison, and that night, the 27th of September,
for the first time in seventy days, the whole garrison of
s 127

THE SPANISH WAR

the Alcazar was able to sleep. All, they say, save Colonel
Moscardo, who, still conscious of his supreme responsi¬
bility, went round his posts hour after hour or sat in his
wrecked headquarters office near the library and received
reports of the isolated street fighting still going on.

When I entered the city not long after dawn I was at
first surprised to see that so much of it was intact, but as
I came out of the cold shadow of the great Puerta del Sol
and saw the famous Zocodover place in front of me I
realised that all the fighting had been concentrated in
that one central spot, where the heart of Nationalist
Spain was beating. The convent of the Santa Cruz on
my left was riddled by shot and shell; of the Military
Governor’s palace, once held by Colonel Moscardo and his
garrison, there was nothing left but a pile of stones; of all
the left side of the Zocodover nothing but stones and
rubble. Cervantes Inn had disappeared, and so had the
colonnade. But there in front was the Alcazar. Here and
there a piece of wall appeared to sway in the sky, broken
away from all buttress or support, but still standing. The
little street which led along the southern facade had gone,
and gone also were the houses which abutted on it. The
main facade was impossible to reach owing to a huge and
gaping mine crater, littered with corpses. Following my
military guides, I climbed the huge slope of rubble, fully
one hundred yards long, which led up the hill to the battle
entrance to the Alcazar, all the others having been blown
down and rendered impracticable. There were enor¬
mous masses of masonry which must have weighed many
tons, and it was necessary to use both hands to pull one¬
self from one great fallen mass to another. Here and
there unexploded hand grenades could be seen, and so
caution was necessary. Every now and then there would

128

THE RELIEF OF THE ALCAZAR AT TOLEDO

be a crash, of rifle fire from lower in the town, which indi¬
cated that another "nest* 5 of Reds had been found and
was being destroyed. Some Red desperadoes held out and
fired from roofs at night for days after the city was cap¬
tured, Then we went past the barricade and entered the
central courtyard of the great building, .Once more a
tangled mass of iron girders and fallen masonry with—still
intact, though not on its pedestal—the steel-clad statue of
the founder of the modern Alcazar, Charles the Fifth.

There, for the first time, I saw the garrison of the Alca¬
zar. They looked like figures taken from some mystic
picture by El Greco. They had that ghostly pale-green.
colour, that gaunt expression and that far-away mys¬
terious look in the eye which the great Spanish painter
alone excelled in. One hardly expected to hear them
talk or see them move. Though they had been relieved
for over twelve hours not one of them laughed or smiled.
No, that is not right. For there, coming up those great
stone steps from the vaults where all of them have lived
so long, is a girlish figure. Golden hair, blue eyes, and a
lissom figure in a stained and torn silk dress. No stockings
to hide grime-covered legs, and feet thrust into a pair of
boy’s tattered canvas slippers. Carmen, as I learnt her
name was, daughter of the Intendant of the Alcazar, was
laughing. Her head thrown back, she was laughing, not
hysterically, but spontaneously. “I have come to take the
sun,” she said to me; “it is so long since I have seen the
sun,” and she held my officer escort and myself tightly by
the hand as if she were afraid we might disappear and
that it might all be a dream. She was a girl of twenty-
five, but she appeared to us like a daughter of twelve, and
we felt the moment very poignant. Never have I seen a.
beautiful girl so grimy. “We have had for the past sixty

129

THE SPANISH WAR

days,” she exclaimed with something like a pont, as she
must have read our thoughts, “less than a quart of water
a day. In the oppressive heat of August and September
it was not enough to quench one’s thirst, and we were
never able to wash. Only the wounded had a double
ration, and the surgeons for their necessities.”

And it was true that after the feeling of reverence which
that gallant garrison inspired, after the horror felt at the
ruins piled around one, the most striking impression was
that of the stench and the filth.

“We tried to keep clean,” Carmen said as she took us
down the great steps to the subterranean galleries which
ran foursquare below, “but it was so difficult. I used to
sweep these steps every day. It was part of my duty, for
we all had to work, but they were as dirty again an hour
later. Shells and mines and explosions sent all the dirt
back again.” Officers told me later that every day bodies
of Reds interred outside or merely lying on the glacis
would be blown up by shell or grenade and masses of
putrefaction would fall all over the place. “We tried to
dean it up without the women seeing it,” one told me,
“and towards the end that was easy, as they were never
allowed to come up into the light as the rain of bullets
and shell splinters was continuous.

Carmen showed us the infirmary; she showed us where
the little mill, worked by the engine from a motor-cycle,
ground their scanty stock of grain, and she showed us the
stable where stood four gaunt mules and a thoroughbred
mare. “It was touch and go,” I said, pointing to the
mules; “you had only five days’ more food.” She took us
both by the hand again and led us farther along the
gallery to a corner where, with one tiny light in a purple
lamp glimmering before it, there stood, pale blue and

130

THE RELIEF OF THE ALCAZAR ■ AT -TOLEDO.

white, a statue of the Holy Virgin, “Muestra Sefiora de 1
Alcazar / 5 she murmured. “We prayed to her here every
day for her intercession, and we knew that nothing could
happen to us . 55

I learnt that the scanty stock of food, just enough to
keep body and soul together, was obtained through the
prescience of Colonel Moscardo. After sending down to
the arms factory in the suburbs on the first days for some
five million cartridges and all the available rifles and
machine-guns, he ordered a sortie which entered and held
for six days the military stores offices beyond the Military
Governor’s palace. That time was spent in bringing in
all the grain his men could lay hands on. When that was
done, the building was blown up so as not to leave an
entrance, and the garrison had a stock of food just suffi¬
cient for two months. Actually, it lasted for seventy
days, and there was still a sack of grain or so over, but
there were not so many mouths to feed at the end as at
the beginning.

Carmen then showed us the library where, until the
last fortnight, that historic newspaper El Alcazar was
edited, printed, and published. ‘‘Printed 55 is not the word
as it was merely cyclostyled. It consisted of from two to
three sheets, often on one side only, the other having
already been used. Most of the paper was taken from the
library of examination papers and lectures set for the
cadets. Three hundred copies were made of each of
seventy numbers. At present, only five complete sets are
known to exist, and two of these belong to the Spanish
State. The news contained was mainly from the wireless
broadcasts. A small set was all that was available with
earphones and no loud speaker. Orders issued to the
garrison appeared in an official column, as well as. an

131

THE SPANISH WAR

astonishing list of articles lost or found. The colonel’s
office served as lost property office.

The lack of light was one thing which troubled the
garrison most, as petrol having given out, except that
left to run the flour mill, they were obliged to manu¬
facture little lamps with wicks fed by the fat from the
horses and mules killed for food. During the siege, 124
horses and mules were eaten and 300 sacks of grain.
There was a stock of luxury tinned goods, ham, and so onj
but this was all exclusively reserved at first for the women
and wounded. When the women insisted on sharing the
same rough food as .the men, however, it was all kept for
the infirmary and for the youngest of the children.

We wanted Carmen to leave the Alcazar and lunch with
us in the town, but she only consented to come as far as
the terrace and there, having told us how happy she was
to have spoken to somebody from the outside world, she
refused to come any farther. “Not till I have a new dress
and stockings,” she said, “and then only at night, for I
must not disgrace our Alcazar by appearing ragged and
dirty.” And so, with a laugh and blowing us a kiss, she
ran back to that Alcazar where she had played as a little'
girl and suffered and wept as a young woman. 1

_ I then visited the great mine crater: it was the mine we
had seen explode when visiting the front lines barely three
days before. It was very large, but its lip only reached the
edge of the outer wall. It was deep enough, and had it
been pierced another twenty yards it would have blown

down the outer wall of the two levels of underground

galleries. ®

What, then, would have happened to the unfortunate
garnson? Half, perhaps, would have been killed or
asphyxiated by the explosion; and could the others have

132

THE RELIEF OF THE ALCAZAR. AT TOLEDO

held out? It is doubtful, though with such men there is
no limit to heroism. The. mine had apparently been
exploded prematurely either by accident or from some
sudden panic, and the Reds, working at digging a .sap
which was to have led to the crater, were taken by sur¬
prise. Their bodies could be seen everywhere. Men were
busy with ropes pulling them out, and on the edge there
were already two score bodies laid out in a row. The
Alcazar had taken its due toll of those who wished to
profane it.

I was told many stories of the siege. But there is one
which must be repeated every time the Alcazar is men¬
tioned; it is a story which will go down in history as long
as heroism and sheer devotion to duty are honoured by
mankind. The story, which I had heard briefly already,
was told me by a young artillery officer whose long, shaggy
black beard and deep-sunken, luminous eyes were eloquent
testimony of his ten weeks of fighting and starvation.

He said: “In the early days of the siege the Red com¬
mander at Toledo called up Colonel Moscardo on the
telephone, which had not yet been severed, and told him:
‘We are going to let your eighteen-year-old son, who is our
prisoner, speak to you. Unless you surrender, we will
shoot Mm at once/ A moment later, the Colonel heard
the voice of Ms young son saying, ‘Father, it is I. What. do.
you want me to do ? 3

“Then in a brave voice, though those few who were by
Mm at that tragic moment say that he grew white with a
pallor wMch has never left Ms face, Colonel Moscardo
replied: T order you in the name of God to call out, “Long
live Spain; long live the Christ King,” and then die like a
hero. Your father will never surrender/ It is understood
that the boy was killed almost immediately afterwards.”

133

THE SPANISH WAR

I may add here, as the most suitable ^place, that the
Nationalists, though they have been accused of severity
and though often they have been severe and wholesale
in their punishments, early in the war captured the son
of Largo Caballero, one of their principal enemies. The
young man is just the age that young Moscardo was, but
he has not been shot and will not be shot.

I was told that towards the end of the siege the surgeons
ran short of chloroform, and eventually amputations had
to be performed without anaesthetics. Often the men
underwent it with extreme bravery, but it told on the
nerves of the surgeons, who never before had been reduced
to such extremities and who hardly remembered the
different technique necessary.

The principal duties, except when there were assaults,
were to keep watch for three things. These were, first,
shell fire, so that all those exposed should take shelter. An
artillery officer was always on duty watching the big
batteries with glasses so as to detect when they were about
to fire. The second was the guard watch against the
attempt of any small party to rush the place by surprise.
Once, and once only, immediately after a fierce bombard¬
ment, the Reds did manage for a few seconds to set foot
on the top of one barricade. They threw hand-grenades,
killing a major of Civil Guards, one lieutenant and two
men, and wounding fifty. The reason there were so many
casualties is that one company of the garrison was drawn
up to relieve the posts which had undergone the bom¬
bardment. The Reds were all shot down and bayoneted,
and the machine-guns dealt with the main body which,
at that moment, was swarming up the glacis. From that
time on no body of men was ever drawn up in the square,
but all the designations of posts and duties were carried

134

THE RELIEF OF THE ALCAZAR AT TOLEDO

out in small groups down below, under tbe protection of
the massive stone vaults more than twelve feet thick.
The third and most unwelcome task was that of the
engineers and their volunteer assistants who, down in the
deepest underground saps, listened for the sounds of the
enemy miners. From calculations made by the engineers,
those portions of the outworks which were menaced were
most often evacuated in time. But this gallant little band
suffered heavily. Frequently it had to ask for fresh
volunteers, and they were always forthcoming.

The following tables of official figures given me by the
Garrison Adjutant himself is a document which reveals
the stark reality of the siege better than anything else.

Siege, July 21 to July 28

Guns fired against the Alcazar:

. 70 days

15.5 mm. in Pinedo .

* 2

15.5 mm. in Alijares .

7

7.5 mm. in Pinedo and Alijares

7

10.5 mm. in Pinedo .

4

Rounds fired:

15.5 mm.

• 3 > 3 °°

10.5 mm. ....

. 3,000

7.5 mm. . . .

. 3,500

5.0 mm. mortar

. 2,000

Hand-grenades thrown.

. 1,500

Dynamite bombs thrown

. 2,000

Attempts at a general assault

8

Attacks by aircraft

• 30

Bombs dropped by war ’planes

. 500

Gas and petrol canisters dropped .

35

Inflammable liquid containers dropped

200

Fires caused by bombs and gunfire

. 10

135

THE SPANISH WAR

Big mines fired . . ,

Small mines fired ...

Maximum number of 15.5 mm. shells fired
in a da y .....
Combatant men .

Killed

Wounded .....
Slightly wounded.....
Disappeared in explosions, presumed dead
Deserted or disappeared
Died natural death ....

Suicides.

Total casualties, 59 per cent.

Officers killed, 23 per cent.

2

2

472

1,100

82

430

150

57

30

5

3

Women inside Alcazar .

Children inside Alcazar.

Casualties to women and children
Natural deaths: two women of over
Births: one boy, one girl.

520

50

. None
70 years of age.

, As I have already said, the rest of Toledo was little
damaged. Beautiful stained-glass windows of the cathe¬
dral had been smashed to pieces by the concussion of the
mines and littered the floor of that beautiful edifice,
crunching under feet as I visited it, together with General
franco and his staff, two days later. The treasure of the
cathedral had mostly been packed up and taken away by

the Reds, whether for preservation or merely as loot it was
impossible to say.

Though some of the wonderful pictures were still there
the majority had disappeared, especially the fine Grecos.
In the treasure room, prepared for packing, I found
the great monstrance of gold, diamonds, and other

136

THE RELIEF OF THE ALCAZAR AT TOLEDO

precious jewels, which stands two feet high and is one of
the most precious of the sacred objects treasured there.
Later I was able to visit the church of Santo Tome, where
the Burial of Count Orgaz, perhaps, the most famous
picture of El Greco, was still hanging safely in its chapel,
having been protected from damage by a wooden scaffold
stuffed with mattresses.

At the hospital, now museum of Santa Cruz, a very
beautiful building, the Reds had deliberately mutilated a
number of pictures and statues dating from the Gothic
period and the later Middle Ages. I speak of deliberate
mutilation and not of chance shots fired either by Reds
or by Nationalists.

Before concluding this chapter it might be interesting
to point out that the garrison which defended the Alcazar
was not made up of the cadets of that famous military
academy. This is due to the fact that it was the summer
vacation, and most of the cadets were with their families.
There were six cadets who were accidentally present,
attending a summer course in engineering. The rest of
the garrison was composed of Civil Guards, soldiers, and
officers who happened to be in Toledo when the move¬
ment began, and civilian volunteers, including a number
of members of the Spanish Falange.

Toledo had been captured and the Alcazar relieved,
and the first great task which General Franco had set
himself was accomplished.

137

VI

FRANCO, GENERALISSIMO AND CHIEF
OF STATE

AS soon as we had our first sight of Toledo, m 7 colleague
Paul B ewsher, dashed back to the French frontier
at three in the morning, taking with him the first news
of the relief of. the Alcazar. He drove back in my old
damaged car with my French chauffeur, Antoine, and
though the roads were bad, the hold-ups for the inspec¬
tion of passports frequent, and the distance very long by
circuitous mountain routes, he reached the frontier over
the Vera pass and was in St. Jean de Luz on the telephone
to the Daily Mail early in the evening. It was a great
feat for a tired man, who had not been to bed for forty-
eight hours and who had shared so fully the tense anxiety
of the situation. It was the last I saw of Antoine as my
regular chauffeur. I felt I could no longer rely on a car
which had been so badly damaged, and also with regret I
realised that m the changed circumstances it might be
better for me to have a native Spanish chauffeur.

Talavera, despite its joy—everybody was mafficking
or the relief of the Alcazar—seemed to me dull after the
excitement of the past weeks, and I realised that other
things must be happening and that full arrangements for
the march on Madrid must be progressing elsewhere,
and possibly also vital changes in the constitution of the
Spanish State itself.

Bewsher had started for the frontier at three in
the morning, and after having written for the Eastern

i 3 8

FRANCO, GENERALISSIMO 1 AND CHIEF OF STATE

Telegraph Cable from Lisbon a second and complemen¬
tary message, 1 set out for Caceres where I knew I would
find General Franco and his amiable personal secretary,
Senor de Sangronis, who is now his diplomatic secretary
and Marshal of the Diplomatic Corps.

1 found a rather shaky Ford car for the journey, driven
by a man we had often employed before as a courier.
Jose was a little man belonging to the Falange militia
but not yet mobilised owing to his age, though he wore
a smart khaki uniform and carried a respectable-sized
revolver. His great claim was that he knew every town
where whisky could be found, and he was therefore a
great favourite with Anglo-American newspapermen.
We reached Caceres after a long but interesting journey.
Flags were flying and bands were playing all along
the route. Jose’s little Ford carried al the patriotic
emblems, and as we were speeding back from the front
towards headquarters, we had an immense reception. All
the way, Civil Guards and Fascists thought we were
official envoys, and we were saluted and cheered in conse¬
quence. We had a hurried meal somewhere, when every¬
body crowded round us to hear the news—no newspapers
had yet arrived— and there were more cheers and some
patriotic speeches, to which a suitable reply was made,
and then came the patriotic songs, for which everybody
stood. People have said that the Spanish are a sad and
proud race. That may be true sometimes. The first only
occasionally, and the second nearly always. But after
such a great patriotic victory as the relief of the Alcazar,
all such national traits vanished, and all that remained
were the happy feelings of a people who knew they had
gained a great victory and who quite unashamedly
laughed and cheered and felt relief at the fact that, the

159

THE SPANISH WAR

Reds with their murders and their crimes were being
pushed day after day farther back. °

The Civil Guard, who heard who we were, came round
not so much to look at our passes as to rejoice with every¬
body else at the victory. Though a frugal and disciplined
corps, I have never known them before to accept a drink
from strangers. This time when they heard the glad
tidings of the capture of Toledo and the rescue of their
comrades in the Alcazar, they made no objection but
pushed their glasses forward and drank heartily with us.
I may be betraying a secret in so saying, but I hope that
no officer of that distinguished Spanish corps will take
exception to it, and that all its members will know in what
high esteem for courage and integrity it is held by foreign
visitors to Spain.

Back through Navalmoral de la Mata with its memories
of fights now six weeks old, and thus to headquarters at
Caceres. There I saw General Franco, surrounded by his
staff, who were congratulating him on his accession to
supreme power. The Burgos Junta of National Defence
had taken the step which for a long time had been in
everybody’s mind, and was withdrawing from the scene in
favour of General Franco. It was from the outset obvious
that a united command and a single leader were infinitely
preferable to the very best efforts of a committee. War
cannot be waged by a committee, however patriotic and
united it may be. But General Franco himself had de¬
manded a delay. He wished the National movement and
his own arms to be consecrated by some signal victory
wHch would gather all the people of Spain round him
efore accepting not only the supreme military command
ut also the supreme civil responsibility.

I have discussed the situation in Spain many a time,

140

FRANCO, GENERALISSIMO AND CHIEF OF STATE

both with General Franco and with General Mola, and
I have always found that the basis of their opinions has
been the vital necessity to extirpate root and branch every
form of Communism or Marxism—political theories
which are entirely foreign to the Spanish people and to
Spanish political traditions, which are founded more on
municipal freedom than on general constitutions, and
which demand above all a scrupulous respect for human
dignity.

General Franco was then just forty-four years of age.
A man of middle height with a muscular frame, an oval
Latin face, his black hair is only slightly tinged with grey,
and that despite his twenty years of active campaigning
in Spanish Morocco. His eyes are the most remarkable
part of his physiognomy. They are typically Spanish,
large and luminous with long lashes. Usually they are
smiling and somewhat reflective, but I have seen them
flash with decision and, though I have never witnessed
it, I am told that when roused to anger they can become
as cold and hard as steel. There is nothing of the con¬
quistador or of the soldier of fortune or swashbuckler in
his physical or mental make-up. The secret of his per¬
sonality, of his dominating mind, does not appear on the
surface. The secret of his extraordinary military career
with his feats of bravery, his traits of decision, his know¬
ledge of strategy—nothing of that is visible. The single
impression that one has is that of a man of peace, of
contemplation, perhaps slightly romantic, certainly highly
chivalrous.

Few officers have had so meteoric a military career,
and one so singularly exempt from favouritism. General
Franco had no great family interests behind him. What
influence his family had was in the Navy, not the Army.

141

THE SPANISH WAR

He had no political party intriguing for his support, no
camarilla of friends and adherents vaunting him in parlia¬
mentary or ministerial circles. He won practically every
promotion on the field of battle. 7

Don Francisco Franco Bahamonde was born at El
Ferrol his family is of Galician stock—in 1892. His
father, who is still living in Ferrol, is Don Nicholas
Franco Salgado Aurojo, and held the rank of Intendant-
General in the Spanish Navy. His mother, who died some
years ago, was Dona Pilar Bahamonde. In accordance
with a charming Spanish custom, her three sons bear first
their father’s name, Franco, and then hers, Bahamonde.

General Franco’s two brothers are Don Nicholas
Franco, who now holds the post of Secretary-General of
State and who it is thought will be Minister of the
Interior, if and when General Franco forms a nor ma]
government with regular ministerial appointments; and
Don Ramon Franco, the airman.

Very early in boyhood, young Francisco pleaded with
his father to be given the earliest opportunity of entering
the Army. There was some opposition, as the family
traditions for long past lay on the sea, but it is possible
that recent events which had so drastically reduced the
fighting value of the Spanish fleet, though it had not
tarnished its record for gallantry, helped young Francisco
in gaining his father’s consent. Anyhow, in 1907, when
he was not yet fifteen, his father allowed him to abandon
his matriculation studies and to sit for the entrance
examination to the Infantry Academy of Toledo, situated
in the Alcazar, which years after he was to relieve. He
was admitted third on the list, and having passed through
t e regulation three years’ course was given a commission
as second lieutenant in 1910. Young Franco devoted

142

FRANCO, GENERALISSIMO AND CHIEF OF STATE

special attention to map work and topography, and in
many of the military essays he was called upon to write in
connection with the campaign against the Moors in
Morocco he laid down with an emphasis that, though it
then made his companions laugh, has since proved its value,
the argument that a perfect knowledge of the terrain is the
only way to order tactical manoeuvres with a certainty of
success. General Franco has remained true to his theory of
accurate topographical knowledge throughout the present
campaign, and has never ordered a move without having
brought before him the most detailed, specially prepared
maps of the wnole neld of operations. The young second
lieutenant, familiarly called Franquito by his fellow cadets,
immediately after a brief leave—given him to show
his new uniform to his family at Ferrol—went to Morocco.
Rapidly promoted lieutenant, Franco volunteered for the
newly formed units of native troops called “Regulares”,
the same that are now an integral part of the Spanish
Army. These troops with their fine cadres, officers and
sergeants in khaki, nearly always without their tunics and
with their shirt-sleeves rolled back to the elbow and their
scarlet infantry hats shaped very much like those of the
British Army, have built up a wonderful reputation. In
these early days this reputation had yet to be won, and
it was young officers like Franco that set the standard
which has been kept ever since. Hardly a month went by
without these new troops being in some engagement or
other, and when Lieutenant Franco returned from leave
having been wounded, General Berenguer, founder of the
Regulares, promoted him to the rank of captain. The
Moroccan war dragged on, and Captain Franco, leading
his infantry in a bayonet charge, received his second
wound, being shot through the body. For weeks he lay

H3

THE SPANISH WAR

between life and death, and when he recovered he re¬
ceived not only the Military Medal but command of one
of the tabors (battalions) with the rank of major. He
was then just twenty-three years old.

General Jose Millan d’Astray, one of the most romantic
figures of the Spanish Army, who, with his bullet-scarred
face, his empty sleeve, and his limp, is the legendary hero
of Spain’s reconquest of Morocco, had at that time under¬
taken the foundation of a new Spanish Foreign Legion,
which was to be predominantly Spanish, but in which
foreigners could enlist. He wished to make of this body
a regiment second to none, and he was therefore looking
round him for officers of exceptional courage and value
and at the same time of the highest military attainments.
One of the first he picked on was Major Franco. The
young officer, still affectionately called Franquito, thus
became officer in command of the first bandera of the
Tercio, as the Legion was called, and second in command
of the Legion itself. Millan d’Astray, ably seconded by
young Franco, then set to work to make the Legion, for
valour and discipline, that which it now is—one of the
finest bodies of colonial troops in the world. Through
the next few years, Major Franco, with his companions
in arms, the one-armed, one-eyed Millan d’Astray, the
braye Sanjurjo—killed in an aeroplane accident while
speeding from Portugal to throw in his lot with the
present movement—and Yague with his lion’s mane of
then yellow, now white hair, spent eleven months in the
year fighting and training the banderas of the new Legion.
It was among such men that Franco made a reputation
for bravery, and they were the best of judges. At this
time he always rode at the head of his battalion of the
Legion on a white horse, and when it went into battle he

144

FRANCO, GENERALISSIMO AND CHIEF OF STATE

did not dismount, but used to ride along the Hue of fire,
giving orders. Affectionately rebuked for this by Ms.
superior. Colonel Sanjurjo, Franco replied: “My men are
accustomed to see me like that, and it is of special value
when the bullets are flying fast and they may be feeling a
little nervous.”

It was thus that at thirty years of age Franco took over
the supreme command of the Tercio with the rank of
Lieutenant-Colonel. General Prime de Rivera was then
dictator of Spain and, quick to recognise the talents of
this young officer, after the capture of Alhucemas, which
brought the Moroccan campaign to a close, he not only
awarded him a second Military Medal—an extraordinary
distinction—but made Mm Brigadier-General and placed
Mm in charge of the newly founded General Military
Academy of Saragossa. Franco was then just thirty-two.
During the years that General Franco was in command
of the Military Academy of Saragossa, the foundation of
wMch had for its object the unification of military theory
and tradition throughout the Spanish Army, Marshal
Petain visited Spain and on his return to France was loud
in Ms praise, not only of the great work done by General
Franco in the few years the Academy had existed, but
also of Ms military' talents.

Then came the closing down of the Academy in 1929,
owing to a change of policy, and for the time being
General Franco, the man of action, was without a job.
That did not mean idleness for Mm, nor did it mean that
he abandoned even for a minute Ms devotion to the Army
and ...to military study. In 19.29 he paid long visits to the
German military schools at Dresden and Berlin, and then,
followed a staff course given by the French staff school at
Versailles for colonels and brigade commanders. It was

*45

THE SPANISH WAR

not until 1933 that General Franco was again given a
command as Military Governor of the Balearic Islands.
A year later, when Senor Gil Robles was Minister for War
in a moderate Republican cabinet, General Franco was
called to Madrid to act as Central Chief of Staff. The
pendulum swung again and, with an extremist Govern¬
ment, which feared to employ him at home, but also
feared to dismiss him, he was given the post of Military
Governor of the Canary Islands.

Franco’s “luck” has become proverbial throughout the
Spanish Army, but it appears to have been much more
than mere luck, as the following anecdote will show. In
one of the perpetual encounters during the war in
Morocco, Colonel Franco, in charge of the right flank
troops, had captured the positions given him as objective
and, in accordance with his custom, was searching the
battle front with his glasses. In the centre about two
miles away was a hill which had been taken by irregular
native units, and where an engineer company was engaged
in building a redoubt. “Come on quickly,” Franco sud¬
denly said to his staff, as he dropped his glasses and called
for his horse. “There is going to be trouble over there in
the centre.” A few minutes later, the horses having been
brought up, Colonel Franco and his staff were galloping
across the field. As they reached the hill, they found the
irregulars streaming back in a panic and the engineers
surrounded by a mass of hostile infantry. The first effort
of Franco and his officers was to rally the native soldiers
and, once they were well in hand, to organise a counter¬
attack which was speedily successful. The hill was re¬
taken, the company of engineers who were holding
out rescued, and the enemy driven back with heavy
loss.

146

FRANCO, GENERALTSSIMO AND CHIEF OF STATE

That was Franco’s Tick’,” all the officers began to say.
But one of them, questioned Franco, who explained the
whole mystery. “I knew there was going to be trouble,”
he said, not because I nad any sudcten intuition, but
because I know those native levies, when they have not
had a long training like the Regulares, are liable to sudden
panic, and that especially if tney nave lost their favourite
officer. Througn my glasses I saw a stretcher being
carried down the line, and I recognised the green sash of
the officer in command of that unit who was greatly loved
and trusted by them. I knew that for the time being
they would be unreliable and would run if attacked.
That is why I rode over and arrived in time to stop
the rot.”

General Franco has also immense confidence in the
cause of Spain, for which he has been fighting during the
past months. In the very early days, when the Red fleet
blocked the Straits of Gibraltar, and when General
Queipo de Llano was receiving reinforcements only by
air, a hundred men or so a day. General Franco decided
that things must be expedited, and he ordered two
banderas of the Legion and two tabors of Regulares to be
sent aboard five waiting transports. His staff, who were
horror-struck, pointed out that the Nationalists had only
one small destroyer, the Data, while the Reds had a small
but powerful fleet. “The ships will be sunk; we will have
lost our best men and the war at the same time,” they
said to him. “I have a firm faith in victory,” was General
Franco’s reply, “and the transports must sail at four
o’clock this afternoon.” His orders were obeyed, and the
transports left accompanied by the Data. The Red ships
appeared and steamed round for a few minutes and then,
apparently suspecting there was some trap, took to their

H7

THE SPANISH WAR

heels and ran away to Carthagena, while the transports
undisturbed, were able to anchor at Algeciras and land
3,000 men.

General Franco is married to Dona Carmen Polo, and
has one little daughter Carmencita, who is twelve years
of age. His wife and child are simply adored by all
General Franco’s Moorish soldiers, and it is touching to
see with what alacrity they spring to attention and present
arms when Sehora Polo Franco passes with little Carmen¬
cita. Often while waiting at General Franco’s head¬
quarters, first at Caceres and then at Salamanca, I have
heard the gay laughter of the little girl and the sound of
her feet as she races along the bare and empty corridors
of the bishop’s palace. I have heard her laughter and
prattle sound from the Generalissimo’s study, and when
I have called on him a few minutes later I have seen
that his knees are dusty, and in a corner on a great black
oak chest I have seen a folded newspaper which was
suspiciously like a “cocked hat”.

General Franco was travelling to Burgos to take over
the full powers of supreme head of the state from the
Junta, and so I went there with him . I had dismissed my
old Ford, and had taken another French car, but I was
glad to be rid of it when I reached Valladolid. Something
had gone wrong with the exhaust, and its tyres were so
thin that both the front ones blew out within an hour.
The first time we were travelling at about seventy-five
miles an hour, and it was a wonder that we were able to
keep the road. At Valladolid I hired another car, also
French, but with a Spanish driver, Juan, who has been
with me ever since. He has been a good servant, at first
somewhat fearful and always very obstinate. He drove
fast and none too well. But, after months of campaigning

148

FRANCO, GENERALISSIMO AND CHIEF OF STATE

ami months of careful instruction, he learnt to tale hair¬
pin. bends at not much faster than fort j miles an hour, not
to drive through villages as if he were engaged in a Grand
Prise motor race, while he developed a feeling of immense
superiority over all the other chauffeurs who went to
the front and had occasionally to dash past cross-roads
avoiding shells, or along an exposed bit of road when
machine-gun bnliets were singing past. He 'was as
typically Spanish as Antoine was typically French, but
both of them were very good and loyal fellows.

When we arrived at Burgos, 1 was able to write down
and telegraph to London a very plain definition of
General Franco’s home and foreign policy. In subsequent
conversations with him I have had this policy laid down
with even greater emphasis. Nobody knows what the
future may bring to Spain, but it will always be interesting
to know what General Franco wanted and what was his
standpoint on social and foreign affairs.

To begin with, it should be pointed out that General
Franco had never been a politician-general. He knew
little of the rivalries of parties and certainly never shared
in them. On the advent of the Republic, though it is
probable that General Franco did. not share in the public
enthusiasm for this sudden change, which he most likely
realised was against the historic traditions of the Spanish
race and was almost bound to lead to insurrections and
Red atrocities, he continued to serve as a loyal soldier
devoted to his duty. He willingly collaborated with the-
moderate Republican government of 1934, and there is
no doubt but that if Azana and other Republican leaders
had sincerely desired to maintain order in 1936, and had
honestly, called tor the collaboration of the Army, they
would almost certainly have found General Franco eager

H9

THE SPANISH WAR

and anxious to support an honest and independent trial
of the new system.

Azana and his fellows, actuated partly by fear and
partly by ambition, scorned the help of the Army, how¬
ever, and preferred to truckle to the forces of the extreme
Left. Communists, Socialists, and even Anarchists, many
with long criminal careers behind them, were sure of an
immediate reception at the President’s palace or minis¬
ters’ offices. Generals and the like could hang about in
waiting-rooms for hours at a time.

It became obvious that things were going from bad to
worse, and that a complete upheaval could not be long
delayed. The Azana hangers-on were afraid to accept
the help of the Army for fear they should be obliged to
abandon part of their political campaigns of greed and
anti-religious hatred, while, on the other hand, they sub¬
mitted to the almost open blackmail of the Red extremists.
If in an Andalusian village two or three Civil Guards
were killed, if a convent or a monastery were burnt, if a
priest or a nun were murdered, it was no use seeking
redress. The Azana government preferred to look upon
it as an unfortunate accident for which Government
blindness and clemency ought always to be available.

But for these Army officers, trained to respect discipline,
law and order, imbued with the traditions of Christian
Spain, things were different. They felt in the great
majority that they could not accept the imposition, by a
minority, of the atheistic principles of Moscow on Spain.
They decided that if things did not improve, the Army
would have to do once more what it had so often done in
the past, take over the government of the country itself.

General Franco himself, in explaining the Pronuncia-
mento which heralded the rising of the Army against the

150

FRANCO, GENERALISSIMO AND CHIEF OF STATE

Madrid Government, has always stressed the fact that this
Government, by its anti-constitutional measures, by its
condoning of crime, and by its supine attitude towards the
imminent menace of a Marxist revolution, had forfeited,
morally, all right to be considered the legitimate Govern¬
ment of the country. The Army movement, on the other
hand, though outwardly at the outset a revolt against the
established Government, was the justifiable defence of the
“real Spain” against deadly menace from abroad. It had
the support, not only of the two strong political parties,
the Carlists and the Falangists, but of the great mass of
the people—workers, middle class, and aristocrats alike.

It is for this reason that General Franco and the other
military leaders, whatever may have been their own
private political leanings, have held the balance so justly
between all the warring factions. For the time being, a
truce has been called, and that truce is being observed.
The future happiness of Spain probably lies in the possi¬
bility of General Franco, the caudillo or leader of Spain,
being able, consecrated by victory, to maintain himself
as sole dictator for a sufficient number of years for ani¬
mosities to die down and for a new generation to spring
up which can knit together the various political ideals and
secure unity for one strong and sane solution.

I have discussed the whole of the domestic and foreign
situation with General Franco on several occasions, and I
take at random from my note-book the following series of
quotations which serve to illustrate what the Spanish
caudillo and dictator was thinking about during the war:

“In Spain we are fighting, not a Spanish internal foe,
but the Russian Communist International, which has
its affiliations in every country.

151

THE SPANISH WAR

“We are determined to free our Spain from the
deadly influences of those Marxist principles, which are
not only false and anti-Christian, but are also entirely
foreign to all our traditions and culture.

“It is natural that there should be a deep and grow¬
ing sympathy between Spain and Germany and Italy;
it is natural that both those powers should wish to help
us. We all three have the same enemy—Communism.
Germany has had to fight Communism; and Signor
Mussolini, when he set up the Fascist regime, was
fighting Communism.

“The Spain of the future will be an authoritarian
state.

“There will be no parliament, but, as every govern¬
ment must be founded on the consensus of opinion, the
will of the people will be made known, when the time
comes, through corporative assemblies.

“The whole idea of the New State of Spain is to be
founded on the rigid principle of all authority resting
in the State itself.

“New municipalities, whose origins date far back in
Spanish history and are an integral part of our domestic
self-government, are to be given the requisite power
and authority to carry out their numerous and im¬
portant tasks.

“When it may be found opportune the will of the
nation will manifest itself through those technical
organisations and corporations which can most authenti¬
cally express the ideals and the needs of the nation.

“I want Labour to be protected in every way against
the abuses of Capitalism, both as regards wages and hours
and conditions of labour. My objective would be finally
profit-participation for workers in all enterprises.

152

FRANCO, GENERALISSIMO. AMD CHIEF OF STATE

"I wish to establish the dignity of the worker, and for
that end I wish to lay down that In the new Spain there
should not be a single Idle person. There Is no room in
the new Spain for parasites, and all must work.”

These views are very close to those held by Right

parties the world over, but General Franco was, never¬
theless, always careful not to appear to associate himself
particularly with any one movement. He gave pledges
to the Carllst Party by Ms strong insistence on the unique
position of the Roman Catholic religion and Church In
Spain, and he also took care never to close the doors to
the upholders of the principles of Monarchy, who are
probably a majority throughout the country.

My view is that General Franco intends to keep the
government in his own hands for such a period—ten years
perhaps—as he may find necessary, and then, gauging
public sentiment as expressed In the trade organisations
and not by elections, he will make the final decision as to
whether Spain should continue merely as a corporative
state with a dictator at its head or whether monarchy
should be restored within the framework of such a state.
My personal feelings are that at some time or other it is
the latter course which will prevail

155

VII

THE FIRST ASSAULT ON MADRID
OCTOBER 1936

/ T"'HE nest move for General Franco was to order
General Varela to march on Madrid. The situation
was a strange one. In a great semicircle the troops of
General Mola held the heights of the Guadarrama range
from near Siguenza to Robledo de Chavela and south of
the Escorial. There the ground was rocky, the roads ran
through ravines, and progress would be difficult. In the
plains of the Tagus valley practically from the foothills of
the Gredos range to Toledo was strung out the army of
General Varela, which with the addition of General
Monasterio’s cavalry and some militia units under Colonel
Rada did not number more than 30,000 men. The only
solution was a very rapid march forward and a brave
attempt at carrying Madrid in a single assault. This
attempt was made and failed.

The speeches and receptions over, General Franco, now
sole dictator of Spain, turned his attention once more to
the war. He decided that, however pressing might be the
demands from Vitoria, facing Bilbao, and Saragossa, facing
Barcelona, precedence for the time being should be given
to two fronts, Oviedo and Madrid. At Oviedo, General
Aranda was being besieged by twelve thousand miners and
Red militiamen. He had barely two thousand men left
to defend the city against the Asturian dynamiteros.
Relief forces were sent to prevent the Reds having a
success to balance their defeat at Toledo, and on October

154

THE FIRST' ASSAULT .ON MADRID'

19 Oviedo, was relieved.. The .limited forces available did.

not allow, however, of the more effective operation which
would have cleared the hills round Oviedo of the Reds,
and till the end of the campaign of 1937 the Asturians
battered away at the Nationalist line, still hoping to be
able to force their way into the city.

I, however, returned to Talavera de la Reina as I felt
that the more important action would have to be fought
on the Madrid front. Little did I believe then, at the
beginning of October 1936, that the operations were to
be so protracted.

Talavera was the same crowded and evil-smelling town
and there was the same difficulty’ in obtaining accom¬
modation. But by this time I was becoming quite w r ell
known* and so very shortly all arrangements were made
for myself* my new chauffeur Juan* and the car. My
first duty was to present myself again to General Varela 5 s
staff. I then met Major the Marquis de Salis, who
throughout the following weeks was to be invaluable as
a guide and mentor to the Press on the Madrid front.
Very amiably he made out for me a pass allowing me to
follow General Varela’s columns. It sounded too good
to be true* and* it was* for the censorship and restrictions
of all kinds on the movements of correspondents were to
be increased in severity as the weeks went on until if was
impossible* in theory at least, for a war correspondent to
move a yard without a special visa, a special safe-conduct*
and usually a Press officer to see that he did not stray on
the way. W^e were all of us shepherded to Salamanca for
a great counting of the sheep and the goats* and then
Captain Bolin handed out to us all neat brown Press
passes which carefully specified that the holder was not
to go to the front without due authorisation from the

155

THE SPANISH WAR

competent staff, nor without a guardian angel in the shape
of a Press officer by his side. I do not think that quite
so many war correspondents have ever been gathered at
the same spot at the same time. We filled to overflowing
the hall-way of the bishop’s palace, adopted by General
Franco as his headquarters in Salamanca, and there within
the forty-eight hours two hundred of the little brown
passes were issued. Some of us grumbled, but most of
us laughed, especially when we were told that shortly
another series of passes would be issued us, this time
green, which would be available only for the entry to
Madrid. We were in high spirits in those days: the
weather was fine, the Nationalist troops were victorious
and Madrid, after all, was only fifty miles away.

The first operations I was to witness were the clearing
of the Avila road to Maqueda, which thus provided
another and valuable switch-connection between north
and south. General Monasterio’s cavalry and mechanised
forces had been pushing their way through the Sierra de
Gredos towards the big village of Cebreros, while another
column had seized the heights to the north. By October
12 the great water dam of El Tiemblo, where the Alberche
river makes an artificial lake of considerable beauty several
miles long, and all the surrounding roads and villages, had
been seized, and the Reds were falling back in confusion
along the road to Brunete and thence Madrid. I drove, the
following day, down the El Tiemblo road to St. Martin
Valdeiglesias, using for almost the last time my Varela
pass which gave me comparative liberty of movement.
All along the road there were wrecked cars, significant
evidence of the speed with which the Reds had retreated.
At St. Martin, a friendly officer, after a glance at my pass,
offered me some of the local wine from a goatskin fl a s k ,

156

THE FIRST ASSAULT ON MADRID

It was sweet and had the full flavour of the grape, a
delectable drink but very heady. A few miles outside
St. Martin Yaldeiglesias, on the road to the fortress
town of Escalona, there is a pretty del with a grassy
sward and the shadow of great rocks and parasol pines
where I lunched. On many occasions afterwards during
the month of October when on the way to the front my
friends and myself would lunch, here. We called the
place Paradise, and it bore a striking resemblance to the
scenery painted by the primitive Italians when they
wished to depict the Garden of Eden.

General Varela was very short of men. His march to
Toledo had been a daring feat of bluff, and his march to
Madrid was to be even more daring. The African ex¬
peditionary force itself did not number much more than
fourteen to fifteen thousand men, and it was by shuffling
the units from one side to another that General Varela
was able to appear in strength, one day on the Toledo
road, and the next day on the Estremadura highway, the
two great avenues of approach to Madrid from the west.
The men were carried, as usual, by lorry from point
to point, but nevertheless there is no doubt that at
one moment they were tired almost to cracking point.
October 17 was the day when the real march on Madrid
began with a rapid move up the road from Toledo. The
Reds had been attacking and had even claimed to have
re-captured the city. General Varela’s reply was brutal.
His main objective was not so much to free the city as
to bring under the fire of his guns the Madrid eastern
railway to Valencia which, leaving the city in a south¬
westerly direction, was within striking distance.

General Varela was standing on the Mirador of Toledo
at eight o clock in the morning with Colonel Asensio and

157

THE SPANISH WAR

his staff by his side. A fine-looking man in his Moroccan
ijdlehah 9 embroidered with gold and green, he wore the
glittering emblem of the Laurelled Cross of San Fer¬
nando, which is the highest decoration an7 Spanish
officer can receive. General ^Varela won this distinction,
which is only given for signal acts of personal bravery
and devotion to duty, on two occasions, and has the right
to wear two crosses. It is never given more than twice,
and one could count on one’s fingers the men who have
been awarded the double distinction.

While the General was standing there, with his personal
bodyguard of swarthy Moroccans formed up fifty yards
away ready to follow him the moment he should decide
to push forward, an officer told me the story of how he
earned his first Cross.

It was during the fighting round Alhucemas which
was to bring the long-drawn-out series of wars in Spanish
Morocco to an end that General (then Colonel) Franco
was entrusted with the command of two columns and
ordered to clear the way for the left flank of the Spanish
advance. The task was a difficult one, for the terrain was
of the worst possible nature, full of ravines, rocky caves,
and sudden precipices, all of which were used to the
utmost by the wily and brave Moorish enemy. After
three days of incessant fighting it was found that one
column was held up owing to a galling fire from a cavern
perched high on the mountain-side and in such a pos¬
ition that the artillery could not reach it owing to the
angle of fire, while from it the whole line of advance was
enfiladed. Several attempts were made to rush the pass,
but they only resulted in heavy loss of life. Franco then
called for volunteers who would climb up at night and,
using cold steel, capture the cave. Varela, then a young

158

THE FIRST ASSAULT ON MADRID

lieutenant, sprang forward and with him twenty men
from his bandera. That night, carrying knives or bayonets,
the little party set out on its climb to the top of the pass
where the cave was situated. Hours went by and then
there came shouts from above. This was the signal for the
whole column to move forward. They advanced without
a shot being fired, and when they came level with the cave
there was still not a sign of life.

Franco sprang off his horse and told his orderly to bring
a torch. With the aid of its fight Franco stepped under
the rocky entrance, and at that moment young Varela
crawled out. He was half naked and covered with blood
from a dozen wounds. In his hand he still clutched his
own great knife. He could not answer questions, but a
search of the cavern showed that the desperate little
party had killed or wounded the whole body of Moors,
forty in number. They themselves had also suffered
terribly. Twelve of them were dead or dying, and eight
were badly wounded.

The telling of this anecdote had taken some time, and
suddenly on the horizon I could see the flaming spot of
a heliograph spring to fife. Behind me was Varela’s
travelling wireless, but in this open warfare the helio¬
graph was as much used as anything. It was a message
to tell us that the first village, Ofias del Rey, had been
captured and that we were all to move forward. The
Mirador had been a picturesque sight under the brilliant
October sun—the autumn lasts long on the Madrid
plateau—with the blue and scarlet cloaks of the Moroccan
cavalry escort, the flat scarlet and gold caps of the
Regulares officers, all gathered on the terrace beneath
the walls of the mag nifi cent old city.

Back to our cars we ran, and in a whirl of dust we

THE SPANISH WAR

followed General Varela and Ms staff to the newly cap¬
tured -village. The country was of the type with wMch
we were to become familiar, occasional rolling hills
covered with scrub, then an olive grove and a few fields
and then more bare parched hills. The Reds had put up
a stiff resistance, and there were half a hundred bodies
lying about the place. In Olias del Rey itself there lay
sprawling over a map-covered table in the village hall a
bearded man of bulky stature with a round hole in Ms
forehead from wMch blood had poured down on to some
order papers, stamped with the hammer and sickle. It
was the Red commander of the sector. He had com¬
mitted suicide when he saw Ms men running.

Outside Olias del Rey on the banks of the road we took
our stand. A plane table was hastily erected for the
accurate map spotting necessary, and a range-finder next
to it. The country rolled away gently below us in a
series of stubble fields to a green spot where patches
of cabbages and garden stuff could be seen and where
a single-track railway line ran. A few hundred yards
beyond was the village of Cabanas de la Sagrada, the objec¬
tive of the central column. Far to the right I could see
the Tagus and the low-lying ground on the other side.
It was here that the cavalry was working with, as its
objectives, the railway junctions of Algodor and Castiljo,
the control of wMch meant the cutting of the last railway
link between Madrid and the rest of Spain. In ravines
I could see horse lines and a great deal of transport. Over
the hills occasional bursts of smoke showed that shelling
was going on, but we had to rely on the messages that
were coming through to General Varela to follow the
victorious sweep of the cavalry, wMch by three o’clock
in. the afternoon had occupied all its objectives and

160

THE FIRST ASSAULT ON MADRID

completely cut the railway lines. I had only just arrived
at Olias del Rey when I saw white steam moving quickly
across the sky-line. It was the last train from Valencia
to Madrid making a desperate and successful dash to get
through to the Reds before the Nationalist artillery began
to play on the railway line and the neighbouring goods
depots and shunting yards.

Meanwhile, the fighting on the main road had been
proceeding with incredible speed. The troops leap¬
frogged each other, gaining five kilometres in an hour.
At Cabanas de la Sagrada two lines of trenches had been
captured and, having entered Olias del Rey at ten in the
morning, the staff and ourselves were in Cabanas de
la Sagrada at two o’clock in the afternoon, while the
advance guards were on Villaluenga aerodrome four
miles ahead of us.

The work had been carried out entirely by Legionaries
and Moroccan Regulares—except the valuable right
flank cavalry work—and I admired to the full their won¬
derful manoeuvring power. With such open country,
it was possible to follow very closely every incident of
the fight. Machine-gun posts could be seen pushing out
to a flank, taking advantage of every bit of cover, and pro¬
ceeding in that .slow, deliberate fashion which is the mark
of a good soldier and is worth twice as much as agitated
hurry. The Red trench lines were clearly visible, but
they never seemed adequately defended. The militia
bunched in the redoubts near the main road or side
roads, while hundreds of yards of good positions on hill
slopes were left unguarded. Legionaries or Moors never
failed to take advantage of such gaps to infiltrate the Red
lines and place their guns time after time to enfilade those
positions still held. Then there would come the moment

161

THE SPANISH WAR

of hesitation when the rot would set in, and one could
see first two or three and then lines of men mating for
the road and for the rear. For that was the terrible
error the Red militia always made. They stuck to the
roads and they ran to the roads when defeated, whereas
any man of experience would have known that the best
line to fall back on is through open country, avoiding
roads like the plague.

The Nationalists, fully aware of this mistake on the part
of the Reds, never failed to have their machine-guns
placed to command both the road and all its lines of
access, and time after time the Red mortalities were
infinitely greater in the moment of panicky retreat thau
during the whole fight. Had those men fallen back
steadily across country, at least half of them would have
got away. But it is easy to understand their mentality.
Badly officered and especially with bad sergeants— this
a natural fruit of their vicious political system—these
men w r ere brought from the rear to occupy their lines
by lorries. They know the lorries are in the nearest
village over the next crest and, having no discipline and
nobody to take control, the moment there is a panic,
every one streams off for the road to foot it back to the
lorries and, as they fondly imagine, safety, as fast as they
can. Whole lines of them come immediately under the
flat trajectory of machine-guns firing at a distance of
between five hundred and eight hundred yards, and not
one In twenty gets away.

I saw this happen time after time, and it made me reflect
on the crimes of those who in any country persuade young
men that political speeches and extremist propaganda
can be a substitute for military training and discipline,
or that the science of war can be learnt by listening to

162

THE FIRST ASSAULT ON MADRID
Communist or Socialist tub-thumping. I picked up on
the field of battle many little pamphlets on how to use
an automatic rifle, or on the training of a platoon. Half
the pages were full of rubbish about freely consented
discipline and the uselessness of the old forms of military
severity, and the other half contained a few pious maid ms
about the value of trench warfare. Any idea of attacking
or manoeuvring was entirely foreign to such handbooks.
It was typical, however, of Red psychology to Imagine
that the art of war could be taught to the scores of
thousands by the aid of penny pamphlets.

The next morning the advance was resumed, and with
almost equal facility first kuncas was taken and then
Illescas, a large village just twenty-four miles from Madrid.
Once again the motor-lorries carried forward the troops,
who advanced in file and then, deploying, by sheer brilli¬
ance of manoeuvring out-flanked and out-fought the Reds
at every point. Once more the cavalry brigade held
the right flank and guarded against any sudden sally on
the part of the strong Red garrison of Aranjuez, which
Is a sort of minor Toledo at the junction of the Jarama
river and the Tagus.

I reached Yuncos after its capture, in time to see a bat¬
tery of Nationalist 4-inch mountain guns rushed up and
pnt Into position at the Madrid entrance to the village
to fire on the Reds falling back on Illescas. An hour later
that village was also taken.

On my way back there was an amusing incident which
showed the general uselessness of armoured trains. This
train was one which had been built by the Nationalists.
It was merely composed of two trucks with double
sheets of boiler-plating built up round them and em¬
brasures for one field-gun and four machine-guns. The

163

THE SPANISH WAR

engine, also protected, was in the middle between the

two tracts.

The railway line which runs from Talavera de la Reina
to Madrid had been specially repaired to allow of the
passage of the armoured train, but the track was occa¬
sionally on an embankment and occasionally in a cutting.
Each time the guns of the train might have been useful
it was found to be in a cutting, and each time the enemy
artillery fire was dangerous the track was on an embank¬
ment, and so the train could not move forward. When
on my way back I arrived at the level crossing south
of Cabanas de la Sagrada, I saw the train drawn up in
a cutting. It had gone forward past Villaluenga and
Azana towards Illescas, and then had returned at full
speed. The lieutenant in charge asked us for news of
what had been happening. “I have been shut up in that
beastly thing,” he said, “and I do not know where we
are. I have just seen great activity at Illescas, and I do
not know whether the enemy are not going to counter¬
attack.” He was relieved but none too pleased, all the
same, when we told him that Illescas had been taken an
hour or more previously, and that the activity he had
seen was that of his own troops.

It must not be thought, however, that the Reds took
everything lying down, but merely that their counter¬
attacks when launched were nearly always at the wrong
strategic point and nearly always badly handled, though
occasionally pushed forward with great violence. Indeed,
the Reds had the usual bravery of untried and ill-trained
troops. They would charge forward through heavy fire
and would fight extremely well until there came either
an adverse incident or till they felt tirod and feared for
the safety of their retreat. They would then suddenly

164

THE FIRST ASSAULT ON MADRID

crack up. They had at that time no esprit de corps or
discipline to keep them in the line.

I witnessed that a few days later when I was visiting
Major Castejon’s columns at Chapineria, on the twisting
road which leads from St. Martin de Valdeiglesias to
Madrid via Brunete. As an example of the dangerous
character of the road I may say that immediately after
crossing the Guadarrama by a military breakdown bridge,
the stone bridge having been blown up, the road twists
and turns thirty-four times before reaching the top of
the plateau, and is described in the guide-books, as
being one of the most dangerous roads in the district.
The ground is covered either with dwarf oak and shrub
or by olives, twisted and stunted. The olive groves in
all this region are very old and there are very many trees
which were planted not long after the great Armada
left Spain.

Castejon had been having a lively time, and his casual¬
ties were greater than those of the columns which had
taken part in the offensive and which had in two days
just made the great leap forward from Toledo to Illescas,
a distance of twenty miles. A number of Red battalions
from General Mangada’s headquarters at Boadilla del
Monte—this place was to prove a thorn in the Nation¬
alist side for many weeks, much work having been ex¬
pended on it by all the Red reserve units—moved for¬
ward that very morning to attack Castejon in Chapineria.
They had brought up four batteries of artillery, and when
we crested the slope in two cars it was obvious that all
we could do was to wait where we were until the fight
came to an end. The Reds came right round the village
in the fields pressing forward with courage and at great
speed. Major Castejon, who had only 700 men with him

THE SPANISH WAR

at the time, using the village itself as a strong point,
withdrew his left wing so as to bring the Reds still
farther forward towards the main road, while he extended
his right so that he was able to place six heavy machine-
guns in battery on the rising ground south of the road.
The Reds fell into the trap. Their officers did not seem
to realise that something unusual was taking place, but
were only too glad that their men should for once be
pushing forward quickly. And at the crucial moment
when the mass of the Red forces was just clear of the
village, Castejon launched his counter-attack; he had
only two hundred men to spare for this, but they were
Legionaries. The Reds were first held up and then,
when they began to show signs of fatigue, all the guns in
the village redoubt and all the machine-guns on the crest,
which so far had been silent, opened fire. The result was
instantaneous. The Red lines, composed of units from
six different battalions, broke. The men, to avoid the
immense detour they had made on their way out through
the olive groves and ploughed land, went straight down
the village street as the shortest way back. They were
decimated on their passage, and when they emerged on
the north-eastern slope they came under the direct fire
of the massed machine-gun company. It was a bloody
rout. The Reds lost 2,000 dead, or over half their force.
It must be said, however, for the Mangada column that
it fought again and again with determination though
with equal bad luck during the next three months.

For two or three days I wandered round this left flank
or mountain sector of the Nationalist army. Occasionally
I went with Juan in my car, sometimes my friend d’Hos-
pital accompanied me in an armoured car on a tour of
inspection of the front posts. We expected then to hear

166

THE FIRST ASSAULT ON MADRID . .

the rattle of bullets on our steel skin, but nothing hap¬
pened and we lumbered along the road feeling hot and
uncomfortable for little adequate return.

At Robledo de Chavela, quite high in the mountains,
we could see the Escorial, the great burial place of the
kings of Spain, nestling against the southern flanks of
the Guadarrama range, just before the watershed which
separates it from the Sierra de Gredos. The huge, orderly -
building, so characteristic in its style of the monastic
coldness of its founder Phillip the Second, was gleaming
in the sun. On the hill slopes above it, through the trees,
was marked the strange V-shaped clearing which, pro¬
duced either by wood-cutters or possibly by some giant
avalanche, served as a landmark for thirty miles around
to indicate the exact position of the monastery.

During these days the shepherds were coming down
from the heights of the sierras bringing their flocks
lower for the winter. Strangely enough many flocks
which had been feeding on the Red slopes were driven
down to Nationalist territory without hindrance-. It was
extraordinary that the Reds should have allowed these
valuable flocks to go without making any effort to stop
them. It is possible, of course, that they did not under¬
stand their maps, and did not realise that the flocks were
being taken away from them under their own eyes.
Mules and donkeys carried the summer outfit of tent
and pots and pans, and then, strung all round the animals 5
saddles or panniers, were rows of little rush bags, each
containing a baby lamb, too young to run along with the
rest of the flock, on their long trek. Their tiny heads
alone peeped out of the rushwork, while their anxious
mothers ran behind occasionally replying to the bleating
of their little ones. It was a touching sight, and so was

THE SPANISH WAR

the spectacle so often seen of a long, loose-limbed young
fellow with a gaunt face and a long dark beard, striding
down the mountain-side with a sheep held by its four legs

over his shoulders.

There are many wolves in these mountains, and the
sheep-dogs are mainly concerned with keeping watch on
them. In severe winters wolves have been seen in packs
of twenty to thirty quite near such busy centres as the
city of Avila.

I often visited the Nationalist lines in the moun tains
during these days and was always amazed at the stern
beauty of the scenery beneath those lovely skies, clear,
cold blue or storm-streaked with red and violet clouds!
The Sierra de Gredos during all these winter mon ths^
and even into February and March of 1937, formed a
modest playground for us. When there was a possibility
of twenty-four hours’ rest, much needed after weeks of
hard work and perpetual travelling by car in the humid
and depressing climate of the Tagus valley, it was a relief
to climb by the town of Arenas de San Pedro, with its
stolid grey stone church and its ruined castle, up the
winding streets of IMombeltran to the Pico pass and from
there on the Barco de Avila road to the Parador de Gredos,
where warm, clean, comfortable rooms with hot baths
awaited us, and whence the view of Almanzor and other
giants of the Gredos range awaited one. Amusing too,
early in the morning, after an English breakfast of eggs
and bacon and tea, to order a couple of hacks—long¬
haired, weedy-looHng animals, but very sure of foot—and
ride for a couple of hours through the clear, cold winds
of the mountain. It was strange also to find the extra¬
ordinary difference of temperature when one trotted down
the hill path from the wind-swept slopes with their

168

THE FIRST ASSAULT ON MADRID

patches of driven snow into the pine woods,, barely one
hundred feet below. Some of. my best memories of the
war are associated with the Sierra de Credos and its mag¬
nificent vistas of snow-capped peats and forest-clad ravines.

There are few places in Spain where the whole colour
of the scenery from a delicate tracery of blue and purple,
with soft patches of almost lead-grey white, can be changed
in an instant to ruddy gold and silver with great 'Streamers
of green and red in the sky, as at almost any point in the
Credos mountains. And yet I remember a December
day in Avila when I was visiting General Mola’s head¬
quarters in the Provincial Treasury, near the great southern
parapets of the city. It was evening, and suddenly the
sky became a glory of copper and dark purple as the
dying western sun, low on the horizon, lit from beneath
the storm clouds, which were scudding along just on a
level with the battlemented walls. It was a sight such as
took one’s breath away and left one with a living love
for a country where such ineffable beauty is so lavishly
displayed.

Meanwhile the pressure on the Madrid front continued.
It would be wearisome to relate the detail in story of
those marches and counter-marches which finally brought
General Varela to the bridges of Segovia and Toledo and
to the desperate but unavailing attempt to rush the capital.
I will transcribe from my note-book one engagement
which was typical of them all, the capture of Maval-
carnero, then presented as the key of the defensive line
round the Spanish capital. It was October 21 and the
attack, was directed along the Talavera-Madrid road,
.known to Spaniards as the Estremadura road.

Just outside Valmojado on the heights we found once
more General Varela and his staff, the suave, clean-shaven,

169

THE SPANISH WAR

Major de Sails, and the giant figure of Captain Delgado
with his smiling ruddy face, and his ready joke. We bd
been m trouble-the jonrnalists-about having corned
ar, but we felt that we bad now been excused and staved
on On tbe crests and slopes from one to three hundred
yards away were the vigilant Moors of General Varela’s
escort, mostly men approaching six feet, rifle in hand
scrutinising every movement. The reason was that’
during the whole of these engagements the lines were so
tenuous and so scattered, and General Varela and his
staff pressed so continuously almost into the front line of
the fightmg, that due precautions had to be made lest a
sudden surprise counter-attack or a hidden party of the
enemy might not attempt a raid on General Varela and
his staff. I must say that I do not believe there is any

so e boM°rchem“. “ “Wing

„ T * eIra “ &11S before “ “ S^tle slopes,

IT £ ' dS “ d ° Hve * rov ' s . with here and there a farm
an the blue asphalted road with its curves outlined by
the familiar red and white fence. Along the road were
the lines of motor transport in the fields, the light artillery
with them caterpillar tractors bunched behind in a hollow,
just where the horses would have been in the olden days
^urther forward were the dotted lines of infantry, with

in open W? ^ S’* time 1W Seen tllem in numbers
m open battle of this nature, larger and darker spots-

. W tanfe used to dest roy the enemy’s barbed
T T te that the enemy, too, w^e

busy and „ne held one’s breath as the pnfe seeded to

felt SfT * T gro,1 P of moving dots, and

had Ciei 7 m0 ”' d 0,1 “ “

I/O

THE FIRST ASSAULT ON MADRID

The sun has been very hot to-day and I saw a Legion¬
ary bring water to a black and white goat tethered in one
of the lorries, exclaiming, “The poor animal is thirsty.”
The cantinieres of the Legion were busy moving up and
down preparing mint tea and other drinks for their par¬
ticular banderas, and the scene was almost one of peace.
Then some enemy tank must have come in sight along a
distant fold of the ground. It was probably one of the
new Russian tanks whose presence was just then being
signalled. We all strained eyes to glasses to find it, but we
could see not hin g.

General Varela s staff and all of ns were standing just

in front of a dilapidated farmhouse wall on the Madrid
side of the village. Where the wall came to an end on
the right was a potato patch. I heard a familiar little
whistle, and looking back towards the withered potato
plants I saw a little white spurt and heard at the same
time a muffled explosion. This was repeated three times,
and then I found everybody looking the same way. Once
more there were four bursts, and we all realised that the
Russian tank was firing at us. But as we could not see the
tank, so the tank could not see us, and there was little
reason to worry. Another dozen or so of shells were
thrown, always about a hundred feet away, and then some
change in the front line invisible to us must have taken
place, forcing the tank to scurry away, for no more shells
arrived. These looked amusing and innocent at the dis¬
tance where they burst, but they are in reality very danger¬
ous things. Fired very rapidly and usually with great
accuracy, these small shells burst into scores of frightfully
dangerous splinters, and if they fall in the midst of a group
they can kill or wound a dozen men.

Once more we followed the usual procedure and moved

171

The SPANISH WAR

forward as the first slopes were taken until we came to
the top of the slope leading down into Navalcarnero and
a out two miles from the little town. The road there
makes a double hairpm curve, and at the top of the hill

“ a /° adma ^’ s ^ W. I stopped there for two hour!
watching the scene. I had alreadp sent back b 7 car a
long telegram describing the operations, but I knew that
the^onlp important thing was the actual fall of Naval-
carnero itself. The Reds b 7 their boasting had made
it a redoubt of supreme importance. Largo Caballero
mself and other Red leaders had visited the triple lines
of trenches the concrete dugout and machine-gun posi-
mns, andhad proclaimed that the 7 were invulnerabk
I knew that once again Monasterio’s cavalrp and an
mfantiy column were guarding the right wing, while
Major Castejon’s vigilant and victorious troops were on
the watch on the left. Three columns, each about fifteen
hundred strong, were entrusted with the task of silencing
the machine-guns and rushing the formidable trench
sjtem surrounding the town. The 7 were Barron on the

?Jf e 7 m Centre, and Delgado on the right.
These leaders were picked officers, with great records, and

their men were tireless fighters.

r,™ ,te EttIe J !, , ouse I stood, there were piles of

newspapers and letters, evidently jns, arrived front the

field post office. While the infantry were getting into
posrnon and While the enemy shells were pl^gg”
fields on either side, hnndteds of yards away, we arLed
onrselv. readmg both newspapers and lettok Some 5
ese were verp pathetic, not so much because the 7 were

pSrL‘° ***, bnt because of Z

F gnorance of the reasons for the Civil War and
the state of die conflict which they displayed

■ 172

THE FIRST ASSAULT OH MADRID

LiveBer sounds of shelling brought us all back to the
crest of the road, both the staff and the few journahsts
who had cared to come so far, and then we could see
among the Bght clouds of dust, mainly caused by bursting
shells and the impact of bullets on the still parched ground,
Barron’s men pushing up from the left. The movement
in the centre and right had gone so fast that already the
battery of Bght artillery just in front of us had sent for
its tractors and was ready to pull out before advancing its
position.

I had thought to have seen the town fall much more
quickly, and in fact was anxious to prepare my message
to that effect as soon as possible. On the far slope of
the hill my car was waiting, turned in the right direction
and ready to rush away with my final telegrams as soon
as I gave the signal. Telegraphic delays, I knew, were
long, and the hour was growing late. The sun was sinking
to the horizon behind me, and yet when I looked through
my glasses I could see no change. Captain Delgado of
the staff passed me, and in reply to my shouted inquiry
answered, “Not yet, not yet.”

In the distance on the left I could see Barron’s first
lines of skirmishers lying on the edge of a ploughed field
almost under a white water-tower; in the centre the slope
hid Asensio’s men from view; but on the right, where
the main Madrid road left Navalcarnero and where the
Reds had prepared their strongest fortifications, I could
see three Moorish machine-gun units slowly moving across
the fields towards a whitewashed farmhouse, already
held by the extreme points of their advance guards
and from which it was evident that a terrific fire could
be poured in enfilade on the Red trenches still held. It
was half-past five, and we all had thought the town would

m

THE SPANISH WAR '

W fallen by three o'clock. Suddenly a harsher screan,
of maclnne-gnn fire and then the line of Nationalise

l b ?j°n ldtand ngit rose “ d moTed fo ™-atd at what
looked hke a jog-trot. A Legion officer told me later that

he had never been so breathless and had never droved across

country quite so fast On the church tower a red flag

flew. Down below, bullets were still whistling, whilf

Nationalist bombers were swooping on the Madrid rod

dropping their tons of explosives on the serried columns
of cars leaving the fated town. S

1 ^ eW , tha ^ the e / ld was imminent, and this was con-
firmed when I saw Barron’s men disappear into a sort of
gulley which leads into Navalcarnero from the north
And so I sat down on a milestone and began hurriedly
to prepare my final dispatch. I heard a expand ju^
mp I saw the red flag slowly disappear from the church
ower where it had been hanging limply during the
evening hours. There was a minute or so delay Civ
ihans were clumsfly handling the flag halliards in the old
red-bnckchurch tower, and then a white flag went up
Navalcarnero had been captured. It was then just hah
past six Five seconds later m 7 car was speeding back at
sixty miles an hour to drop one telegram in the Talavera
post office which would make the venture of the wire
to Badajoz, thence to Lisbon and so to London- the
secon copy another car would carry on over the Sierra
de Credos to Avila to take the wire to London via Vigo
It was thus and only thus that one could be certain that
the maximum speed of transmission would be ensured

thatni^ht rii r^ tll0 r gil C3ptUred ’ was not a P^ce of peace
in tb Red r Ltlamen ’ Wil ° bad been left behind

cuttflor erV I 6 '" 1136 ^ had been genuinely

off or else because sleeping off the results of a carouse,

174

THE FIRST ASSAULT ON MADRID

Wl 7 knew what was happening to them, and were
firing through the night from one house to another.
Colonel Asensio gave the strictest orders that no attempt
was to be made to dislodge them at night, and that all
that should be done was to put a fine of sentries round all
such houses so that the men could not possibly escape.
The nest morning a score of hand-grenades or so were
thrown through windows and down chimney pots, a
five minutes’ scuffle, and all was over. Apparently over,
at least, for two days later a Spanish journalist was shot
through the lungs and killed by a Red who had remained
m concealment ah that time.

When I walked through the streets of the little town
m the morning I was struck by the dazed expression of
the civilian population which remained. It was not
difficult to know the reasons. I stopped at a chemist’s
shop to see if he had any mineral water, a valuable pro¬
duct m any country after a battle when one does not know
what may be the pollution of the water supply, and the
whole horror of the Red dominion was detailed to me in
a few words. “We were all right until the fall of Talavera,

I was tdd, “because all that time the local Committee
of Public Safety was formed by townspeople and persons
we knew. But after that Madrid sent us out an entirely
new committee which we were obliged to obey implicitly.
It was made up of the worst scoundrels of Spain. Murders
and tortures then became a daily occurrence. Women
and young girls were not spared if they resisted the
desires of the young criminals of the committee. I can
tell you that there is hardly a woman in this town who has
not been raped by the Marxist crowd from Madrid and
their friends and armed escort. But they all left Naval-
car hero two days ago.”

*75

THE SPANISH WAR

I then went to inspect closely and in daylight the
trenches which the afternoon before I had picked out
with my‘glasses. It was obvious that they had been
planned by some skilled engineer, though here again
as so often elsewhere, I found the barbed wire belt thin
and ill-placed. The trenches themselves, however, were
properly dug, had both parapet and parados and, though
not deep enough to need a fire-step, were capable of
providing adequate shelter. In ah the Red trenches I
have visited I was never able to understand how, with all
the labour at their disposal, the Red commanders were
never able to dig real deep trenches, with real strong-
points and with proper cover from enemy hand grenades.

These trenches had large and frequent dug-outs,
often with concrete roofs, and yet the bombardment by
artillery or even war ’plane was not at that time of sufficient
intensity to demand such precautions. More work spent
on the trenches and their barbed wire defences and on
their tank traps would have paid the Reds better than
all these concrete shelters, which incidentally, it appears,
were more used by the Red commanders and commis¬
saries than by the soldiers.

I went along the familiar stretch of trench lines finding
little signs of resistance till I was level with the great
redoubt on the Madrid road with its star-shaped salient,
its triple fine of wire, and its reserve positions which made
it a real strong-point, solid and well built. Here was the
first place I saw where a tank had crushed a gap through
the barbed wire and then had gone on rocking from side
to side to cross the whole system of trenches and to take
their occupants by enfilade from the rear. Apparently at
the same time the Legionaries and Moors had rushed for¬
ward and thrown their hand grenades. In the trenches

176

THE FIRST ASSAULT ON MADRID

I saw the Red dead lying here and there in groups, then
for fifty yards in ones and twos, and then again in a massive
group. Here at least the Reds had resisted and stood their
ground until they were killed by attack at the closest of
ranges, that of the hand grenade.

I looked at the papers of scores of the dead. They
had already been taken for a cursory examination by the
Spanish Nationalist military authorities, and had been
laid down again neatly next to most of the bodies. I
found that the dead were nearly always conscripts who
had been called up by the Reds and forced to serve for
them in their Red army. They had fought bravelv,
however, and a soldier could but have respect for them.
Some eighty yards in the rear I found another body. It
was of a handsome young man with olive complexion
and black, closely curled hair. He had been shot while
making his way back as fast as he could to the rear, from
the very trench where so many men had been killed.
His papers showed me that he was an elementary school
teacher and that he belonged to an advanced section of
the Spanish Socialist Party.

From Navalcarnero the lights of Madrid could be seen,
and it was certain that the Reds within the capital city
must by then be aware that they had been defeated and
driven back by General Varela. What would the Reds
do? was the question we all put, and, though none of us
knew, it was certain that most of us thought that they
would fall back through the undefended city and take up
fresh battle to the east. We all then thought that the
capture of Madrid ought only to be the question of a
few days, but we were all wrong.

We ought to have realised that General Varela had not
many more than fifteen thousand front-line fighting men

l 7 7

THE SPANISH WAR

with him, and that they could not hold the lines of block¬
ade m front of Madrid and at the same time supply £
driving force necessary to pierce throngh the street'
despite the urdimitecUse of machine-guns and tanks
There took place first of all a week of desperate and
feverish fighting from place to place along the thin and
scanty lines of the Madrid suburbs, then the assadt
against the hue of the Manzanares river—and failure
, reaso “ for this failure I will discnss in the nea
chapter Here I will content myself with an actual
description of what toot place.

The western and southern suburbs of Madrid consist
^rst of the scrubby piece of parkland, known as the Casa
de Campo, which undulates north of the Estremadura
road to the^ Corunna road, where in a residental villa
strict it joins up with the better-known Pardo Park, and
then southwards a narrow belt of red-brick houses, mostly
with red-tiled roofs from the Segovia bridge to south of the
I oledo bridge with two or three considerable suburbs like
Carabanchel and Getafe and a number of large factories,
the most familiar of which, to us journalists, was one for
the manufacture of “washable gloves”. It was all rather
mysterious and somewhat frightening to us when we
used to dash up at the outset with very little idea of
exactly where we were. Custom soon brought contempt,
however, and we and everybody else used to drive up by

. lg 7 ° rnme cars in a procession, along the main
road in full view of the enemy and barely five thousand

jT 1 LlS advanced batteries. The road was often

selled, but rarely when we were on it, though once an
ahan journalist who had left his car to make an inquiry

returned to find it a heap of scrap iron.

General Varela pushed forward till he held Getafe and

178

THE FIRST ASSAULT ON. MADRID

then Garabanchel and was on the verge of entering
Madrid. In front of him was the Manzanares and on the
farther bant the capital. The Manzanares, though often,
a mere trickle, was, owing to its depth and position which
enabled Red machine-guns to enfilade attackers, to prove
one of the most effective natural defences the Reds had.

By November 7 the Nationalist troops had seized,
after fierce resistance, the hill known as the Cerro de los
Angeles, and the line of investment was thus complete- on
the western side. The whole world was waiting for news
of the fall of the Spanish capital, and rumours, one wilder
than the other, were flying about everywhere. Even we
journalists, "waiting so anxiously a few miles behind the
firing line, listening to the incessant racket of artillery and
machine-gun fire, did not know exactly what was happen¬
ing. Reports came that Nationalist tanks had seized two
bridges. Further news was that they had entered the
actual streets of Madrid and were being followed by picked
assault battalions.

There flashed through the world the news that the Gran
Via and the great Telephone skyscraper were in the hands
of Varela’s troops who controlled the whole southern sector
as far as the War Ministry. I must confess that I was
confident of rapid victory and thought that the Nationalist
advance had gone much farther than it really had. Later,
when the disillusionment had somewhat faded, my
colleague Paul Bewsher drew for our amusement a map
of Madrid showing the points to which various over¬
sanguine correspondents had made the Nationalist troops
advance. We were all to blame, though the lack of
really reliable information and the feverish anxiety of
the hour were valid excuses. But hour after hour went by
and there was no confirmation of the entry of Nationalist

m

THE SPANISH WAR

troops into Madrid, and in our messages we had cau¬
tiously to fall back to the banks of the Manzanares. That
was where the fighting was taking place and that was
where the lines ran for months to come. Later I learnt
that Major Mizzian of the Regulares had actually
reached the Plaza de Espana. He was wounded there and
brought out by his devoted soldiers.

On November 8 I learnt of a very grim incident which
illustrated the ferocity of the fighting and the horror of
Red methods. In front of the Segovia bridge, towards
which a column of Legionaries was pushing, the Red
High Command ordered a battalion of the newly formed
Women Militia to deploy. The Legionaries were then
advancing from Alcorcon, and their officers, thinking the
women had come to surrender—many of them did so in
subsequent fighting—ordered their men to cease fire.
Soldiers were sent forward to question the women, but
suddenly the whole battalion dropped to the ground and
opened fire with rifles and machine-guns. There was no
alternative but to reply. The inevitable happened
Within an hour the women were running in frantic
retreat, leaving more than a hundred dead and wounded.
Obeying the orders of their officers, the Legionaries re¬
frained from firing on the retreating women, but merely
followed them up to the little bridge-head of villas and
small red houses which at this point lines the Manzanares.

By November n it was clear that Madrid could not
be taken by assault. The Reds had crammed every house
which dominated the river with machine-guns. Every
street had been barricaded, and heavy and light artillery
swept every approach. The only way would have been to
batter down the capital house after house, street after
street. The loss of life would have been terrible. But it

180

THE FIRST ASSAULT ON MADRID .

was evident that General Franco had at that moment
neither the means nor the desire thus to capture the city.
His artillery was not sufficiently powerful, nor his supply
of shells adequate. He had only a small army confront¬
ing Madrid, and he could net accept the terrible costs
which a frontal attach would have meant. Over and
above that, as he explained to me in eloquent terms,
“Madrid is our city; it is our capital. The Reds from
Moscow may contemplate its total destruction, but that
is a thing which I cannot do. 35

The first battle of Madrid had come to an end. The
attempt to rush its defences had failed because the Reds,
instead of falling back from the “open city” of Madrid
when they had been defeated in battle before it, had taken
refuge in its maze of streets and in the fact that there
was a great civilian population, mothers and fathers,
brothers and sisters of the Nationalists who would be
slaughtered were an assault to be pushed to the bitter
end. They had lined the barricades of Madrid with
foreign volunteers and with foreign arms and, therefore,
another way had to be found to capture the capital of

VIII

STALEMATE ON THE MADRID FRONT
NOVEMBER—DECEMBER 1936

'T'HE drive on Madrid had failed and another way
-*■ had to be found to ensure the capture of the Spanish
capital, the major issue of the Civil War.

It was certain that once General Franco held Madrid
the Red grasp on the southern region surrounding Ciudad
Real and on the eastern provinces, grouped round Car-
thagena and Valencia, would speedily be loosened. The
only remaining issue would thus be a straight fight be¬
tween Catalonia and the rest of Spain, and the result of
such a conflict could not be long in doubt. It was a
policy of striking at the head. It continued in favour for
a time, and then other methods were chosen. The prob¬
lem of the moment was therefore how to handle the
thorny question of Madrid. There were many who were
in favour of a long wait through the winter months while
ammunition and stores were being piled up and other
military preparations were being completed. Others de¬
murred, saying too much time had been lost already,
pointing to the formidable freights of Russian and Mexican
military equipment being poured every day into the
country. Battalions of foreign troops at a time were
coming across the French frontier into Red Spain, and
though it was known that counter-steps were being
taken to constitute mixed foreign brigades of the Spanish
Legion, National anxiety was at its height.

The history of the next few months was to prove that

182

STALEMATE ON THE MADRID FRONT

the second school of thought was in the wrong. Franco’s
Nationalist army was not strong enough at that moment
to bring the war to an end except at such cost as all its
leaders would refuse to contemplate.

I have often consulted during this period a compact
little statement prepared from confidential documents
showing for the two last months of the year the supply
of men and military equipment arriving in Red Spain
across the French frontier alone. It would be wearisome
to give the table of statistics with their dates, but a few
excerpts will show what was the formidable problem
facing General Franco.

October 19: Seven Potez “54” left Paris for Barcelona.

October 31: 150 men, mostly British, arrived at Per¬
pignan and left for Barcelona; they were nearly all
specialists in explosives or war ’plane manufacture.

November 2: 300 more volunteers through Perpignan.

November 5: Six troop-carrying lorries, the first of a
batch of 150, passed through the Perthus pass to
Spain.

November 9: An expedition of 6,000 men is now passing
through Perpignan. Four to five hundred cross the
frontier daily, the majority of them being Belgian
or French unemployed from the Lille district.

November 14: Nine heavy lorries took the Llivia road
carrying war ’planes, to be assembled at the Bolvir
aerodrome.

November 17: Five hundred men went through Perthus
on motor lorries before six p.m.

November 24: A special train arrived at Perpignan
carrying 1,100 volunteers of whom 800 were
French.

183

THE SPANISH WAR

Before the end of November it was estimated that at
least 10,000 Red volunteers, nearly all men with previous
military training, had passed through Perpignan alone.
Thousands of others had been taken by ship and had
landed direct at Barcelona or Valencia. Tanks, machine-
guns, and artillery had been poured into the Red ports,
and a very large number of international brigades were
being built up. It is difficult now to say exactly how
strong these brigades were, but from figures given me
by competent authorities I should not hesitate to place
the total number as being not much less than about
60,000 men.

Against this formidable figure, throughout the winter
months General Franco had little to place. Until well
into the new year it would have been true to say that no
body of foreign infantry was fighting on his side. Obvi¬
ously from the outset the Nationalists had bought war
’planes from abroad, since the majority of the small
Spanish aviation corps was in the hands of the Madrid
Government when the rising took place at the end of July.
Foreign airmen came to fly these machines, and squadrons
of bombing and chaser ’planes, entirely manned by either
German or Italian volunteers, were used, while Spanish
airmen were being trained. As the war grew in intensity,
though more machines were being piloted by Spaniards
the foreign volunteers could not be dispensed with. There
were also foreign artillery, tanks, anti-tank guns, and anti¬
aircraft guns. In the beginning these were manned
entirely by foreigners, but Spanish tank crews and Spanish
gunners were trained and the original foreign volunteers
gradually became confined to the task of specialists for
repair and upkeep.

Then as the strength and numbers of the Red

184

STALEMATE ON THE MADRID FRONT

international brigades became known, it was found essen¬
tial to form to counterbalance them mechanised infantry
units of foreign volunteers, which could be put m the
field as units though under the high command of Spanish
generals, and which could provide that element of s oc
power which so far had been confined more or less to
the brigades from Africa. The first time drat any of the
foreign infantry units took part in fighting was at the
capture of Malaga, and even then their action was con¬
fined to one surprise attack on one of the roads leading
to that city. Later in the year, when more decisive
actions took place round Madrid, further mechanised
units of Italian volunteers, heavily armed and well pro¬
vided with tanks, took a prominent part in the fighting.
The Irish brigade, though small in numbers, was also one
of the foreign units which could be relied on.

It is difficult to estimate the total number of foreign
volunteers in the service of the National Government,
but I would be surprised if subsequent detailed examina¬
tion proved them to be much over 60,000 men. The
Red international volunteers on the side of Madrid, and
the White international volunteers on the side of Burgos
must have, in a sense, more or less cancelled themselves
out. It was also certain that the Reds had invoked this
foreign aid much earlier than had the Nationalists, as
was evidenced by the presence of Red foreign infantry
in the line at the end of October, at least three months
before the Nationalists had any similar units m the field.
Had the Nationalists marched straight on Madrid at
the end of September, they would not have found any
of these foreign units or foreign weapons, and most
probably the Spanish capital would have fallen at the
first assault. But as I have already said, the Alcazar o

185

THE SPANISH WAR

Toledo would have been captured by the Reds, and that
was the alternative which confronted General Franco.

At the moment when the first assault on Madrid had
failed, the Nationalist position in the field, and especially
in the Northern Madrid sector, was one of considerable
peril. The Nationalists had driven a very thin wedge
through the scrub oak fields of the Casa de Campo
abutting on the Manzanares, just at the city limits,
where on the opposite bank the University City, that
magnificent collection of hospitals, laboratories, and lecture
rooms built by King Alfonso, spreads itself on the hill
between the Iron Gates and the Paseo de Rosales.

The Legionaries holding this narrow passage had Reds
on the right, clustered in the rows of workmen’s dwellings
near the Segovia Bridge. They had Reds to their left,
occupying the whole of the Casa de Campo as far as
Partridge Hill, the rise along which the main Corunna
road leaves Madrid. They had also Reds behind them
in the Casa de Campo at Humera, and back as far as the
persistently annoying Red camps at Boadilla del Monte,
Pozuelo, and Aravaca. When they were shelled, they
were under fire from three directions at the same time.

Something like this situation prevailed likewise on the
extreme right of the Nationalist lines near the Toledo
bridge and on the eastern side of the Cerro de los Angeles.
Both on the left and the right flanks fighting was
continuous throughout the greater part of November,
December and January, and though naturally there was
a certain amount of ebb and flow, it must be said that
the Reds did not at any moment make appreciable gains.
On the other hand, though the Nationalists did make some
progress, they could not strike a decisive blow, and military
experts might well ask the question whether it would not

186

STALEMATE ON THE MADRID' FRONT
have been wiser policy to economise all these efforts lor
one big push months later.

One thing, perhaps, might have been visible, and that
was that on the left flank the capture of Boadilla del
Monte and the approaches to the Corunna road should
have preceded any move against Madrid proper. A
Nationalist offensive from the base line, Brunete-Casa de
Campo, made in November might have been successful
without much loss, as at that moment the international
brigades were not so numerous, and many batteries of Red
artillery and battalions of tanks had only just been dis¬
embarked at Valencia, and were not available at the front.

Instead, an attack on the University City was chosen
as the nest move. It was brilliantly carried out, it was
heroically persisted in, but it was only another failure.
Those streets of Madrid which proved an impenetrable
barrier from the Segovia Bridge to the Toledo Bridge
were equally strongly fortified on the fringe of the
Western Park and of the gardens of the University City.
Legionaries and Moors day after day made forlorn at¬
tempts to reach the Montana barracks or to pass the
Northern railway station, but each time they were forced
to fall back. Every house was a machine-gun redoubt.
Had the whole quarter been reduced to ruins—and that is
what was finally the fate of most of the streets in the
Arguelles district and along the Paseo de Rosales the
Reds could have still opposed that fatal machine-gun
barrage which cost so many lives in November and
December.

From the Casa de Campo it was possible to watch the
initial stages of the Nationalist offensive against the
University City, commanded by Colonel Asensio with
the support of another column under Lieut-Col. Barron.

187

THE SPANISH WAR

But the best description, is that given me by one of Asen-
sio’s staff officers who also gave me ample details as to
the subsequent situation within the cit y.

“Our column,” he told me, “which consisted of two
banderas of Legionaries and two tabors of Moroccans,
was formed on an extremely narrow front not more than
five hundred yards broad. That was the only safe front
we had, and therefore it was arranged that the attack
should be made by one bandera in front with one tabor
following, and that the other two units were to be held in
reserve on the western bank of the Manzanares to await
events.

“We then moved up to the low wall dividing this part
of the Casa de Campo from the Manzanares. At this
time of the year there was very little water in the
river, but it formed a deep ditch with steep banks on
either side rendering it a formidable obstacle under
machine-gun fire. Then came the rising ground, a Red
trench, and again a big red-brick building, barricaded
and sandbagged, the Faculty of Letters. That was the
first objective assigned to us.

“Our artillery had been battering the banks of the
Manzanares for an hour, and Colonel Asensio at eight
o’clock in the morning had three batteries of four-inch
trench mortars brought up for a final whirlwind bombard¬
ment of the Red positions immediately in front of us.

“The Reds undoubtedly knew of our intention to
attack, for a stream of machine-gun bullets was constantly
chipping the bricks on the crest of the wall. But our
engineers were preparing a neat passage for us which
we thought would surprise the enemy. They had placed
dynamite cartridges along it for about one hundred yards,
and at Colonel Asensio’s signal the fuses were lit and the

188

STALEMATE ON THE MADRID FRONT
whole mass o£ wall fell outwards, on to the slope leaing
down to the river, in an immense cloud of smoke T e
explosion was the signal for our advance, andthe ricrs a.
hardly ceased falling when in eight single files we dashed
out of the gap thus formed to spread out slightly m a
fan shape and make the assault. Colonel Asensio himself,
grey-haired but agile and upright as a young man, with
a stick in his hand, was easily first, and he maintained his
lead until he was well on the other side of the Manzanares.

He had jumped 'straight down from the bank into the
water, and a split second later was climbing up the oppo¬
site bank. A breathless rush took us to the Red trenc^
which we entered simultaneously at eight points, to find
it empty. The Reds had fled. The explosion and the
unexpected fall of the wall had intrigued _ the Red
machine-gunners, who ducked down in then shelters
wondering what was going to happen next. Their fire
so far slackened that we only lost two killed and four
wounded in this preliminary assault. Our men were then
deployed, and five minntes afterwards we were m the
Faculty of Letters, turning the Red machine-guns on
the fleeing foe. It was the most hectic ten minutes I

have ever passed.”

Afterwards, however, the University City, the lecture
halls, the huge laboratories, the immense Clinical
Hospital, the research buildings, great blocks of red
brick with white stone facings standing each isolated from
the other in hundreds of acres of laid-out grounds, had
to be captured bit by bit. The Clinical Hospital for days
was divided between the Nationalists and the Reds.
The latter had to be bombed out or smoked out, floor by
floor, and casualties in the process were very high and not
on the Red side only. Communication with the rear

189

THE SPANISH WAR

was extremely hazardous. Not only were the Nationalist
positions in the Casa de Campo on the west bank of the
Manzanares being continually attacked, but the wooden
bridge erected at nights by the engineers to link the two
banks was directly enfiladed by two Red machine-gun
posts and was also the target for a great deal of artillery
fire, most of it fortunately very inaccurate. In the day¬
time, the bringing up of supplies or reinforcements, and
the evacuation of the wounded could only be done in
armoured cars. At night, it was possible to cross on foot
in the interval of machine-gun bursts, provided one ran
very fast.

At the outset, in the grounds of the University City
itself it was barely possible to move from the shelter of
one building to another without great risk and, finally,
it was found necessary to dig communication trenches
linking all the N ationalist positions, while at the same time
a complete system of front-line trenches with barbed
wire was prepared, facing the Western Park and the Argu-
elles quarter of Madrid. But this was much later, when .
the hope of piercing to the heart of Madrid from the
University City itself had been abandoned for the wiser
scheme of a broad, sweeping, encircling move which
would force the enemy to evacuate the city so as not to
be cut off and trapped.

In these November and December days, cold at nights
but often with wonderful sunny mornings and afternoons,
the whole idea was that, using the University City as a
'place d artites, the Nationalist leaders could penetrate
east to the Glorietta des Cuatro Caminos, and south to
the heights of the Paseo de Rosales and the ill-fated
Montana barracks, and thus gain control of Madrid.
From Cuatro Caminos broad, wide avenues lead to the

190

STALEMATE . ON-THE MADRID FRONT

south-east of Madrid and to the Retiro Park, and any¬
body who could penetrate by these straight thoroughfares
would isolate the Red defenders of the bridge-heads.

Day after day, from various high houses abutting on
the Casa de Campo, I was able to follow the fight.
Once in late December, when the advance was nearly
completely held up, I was even able to cross the bridge
and dodge about in the University grounds until 1 could
see the immense star-shaped mass of grey-brown bricks and
masonry, all that w ? as left of the burnt-out model prison,
with, round it, standing stark and naked, the empty shells
of what were formerly fine eight-story buildings. From
the barricades built here and there in that wilderness of
destruction came shot and shell at every minute. The
procedure for attack was nearly always the same. There
would be a hurricane bombardment, and then there would
come roaring overhead the Nationalist bombing ’planes,
huge three-engined affairs, each capable of carrying one
ton of bombs. The fighting squadrons watching for
Red ^planes would be circling high overhead, tiny specks
barely visible until they turned and swooped, when they
w r ould shine in the sun. Then through glasses the bombs
could be seen to fall. Like shining exclamation marks,
they would sway from side to side as they fell. There
would be a dozen, fifteen, or twenty in the air at one time.
Below would be the Paseo de Rosales, that terrace of tall
buildings just on the other side of the Manzanares and
the centre of Red resistance. Then the first crash, and
after that a gigantic roll of drums, as explosion followed
explosion. Great black clouds with dull, red cores were
rising" sky high, as flash after flash showed where 250 lb.
bombs were rending stone from stone and sending
buildings' toppling. During one bombardment,,,in. which

191

7

THE SPANISH WAR

thirty bombers took part, I was watching from the roof
of a house belonging to General Cabanelles, the President
of the Nationalist Junta de Guerra. This stands at least
three thousand yards from the Paseo de Rosales, and yet
as the bombs exploded it shook as if there had been an
earthquake. What must have been the effect in the Paseo
de Rosales and along the transverse streets facing the
University City where the bombs were actually falling!
When, however, the smoke lifted, the ruins appeared
much the same, except that here and there a cloud of
smoke would show that another fire had been started.
Madrid these days was never without half a dozen fires
burning themselves out in all this western quarter of
the city. But of actual change in the situation there was
none. The Legionaries and the Moors found this to
their cost every time they tried an attack. They might
progress fifty yards or so, they might capture a block¬
house, but machine-guns would appear from their deep
dug-outs, mortars would resume their rain of bombs,
and the attack would fizzle out. It would have needed
ten times the number of bombing ’planes the Nationalists
possessed, executing three raids a day for over a week,
to make any impression on the Red defences in this sector.
It takes an immense amount of explosives to demolish
well-built houses, and ten times as much again to reach
cellars and underground dug-outs.

The house of General Cabanellas became one ot our
accustomed observation-posts, and though it must have
been obvious to the Red artillery observers that this was
so, they only shelled it on one or two occasions, doing
extremely little damage. To those who remembered
how any suspicious point was always flattened to the
ground during the Great War, this supine attitude on

192

STALEMATE QN THE MADRID FRO XT

the part of the Red artillery would have been surprising
but for the reflection that the shortage of both shels and
guns necessitated the restriction of fire orders to the more
important functions of repelling or preparing attack, as
the case might be. We had our impromptu picnics;
some were satisfied with cold fare—sandwiches, eggs or
sardines—but others, and especially the Spanish officers,
preferred something hot, and so fires would be lit, sending
sparks and smoke pouring out of the chimneys while
stews were being cooked or sausages fried. It was a lazy
life for the time being, but everybody feared that at any
moment the miracle might happen, the Red resistance
might collapse; the gallant Legionaries might find a
solution to the problem of how to fight their way through
streets when every house was a fortified redoubt, and none
of us could afford to be absent in such an event. There
were bridge parties and there was also chess, while many
simply took out the General’s deck-chairs—his house,
though intact, had been looted from cellar to roof by the
Reds—and basked in the December sun. There were two-
little dogs running about the place. One black mongrel,
very small, very old and frightened, would come out of
her hiding-place to take a little food. The other, a yellow
puppy with clumsy paws, was a war victim, a fragment of.
shell having cut her head, blinding the poor animal in
one eye. Earlier in the war we had taken dogs back and
found them homes, but by now there were very strict
rules about this, and all dogs found wandering at the
front were to be shot at sight, as it was feared they would
spread hydrophobia and other diseases. We were only
able to save the lives of these two animals by shutting them
In the grounds of the villa and leaving them sufficient food
and water every time we went back to Talavera or Avila.

193

THE SPANISH WAR

The dog problem was indeed acute at one time.
Abandoned by their owners, they had often formed in

savage bands and would roam the country looking for
food. They were known to have adopted the habit of
disinterring dead bodies, and it became necessary to get
rid of them all. I remember one night, walking back to
my car in the Casa de Campo, having to chase off half a
dozen huge brutes circling round a very frightened donkey
which they had evidently picked out as affording the
prospect of a good meal.

The Legionaries and Moors probably lost in the fighting
in and around the University City at least as many men
as they did in the whole of their advance on Toledo
and Madrid. It was a costly gamble, and one that the
Nationalists lost.

There are many anecdotes as to life and death in the
City. When the Legionaries first occupied the research
buildings they found a large number of rabbits, pigs,
fowls, guinea-pigs and other animals in cages, runs, and
stables. Food supplies were not coming up very rapidly,
and in twelve hours the whole place had been swept
clean and everywhere satisfied Legionaries were sitting
picking bones and washing down their meal with coarse
red wine. At that moment a runner dashed up from
General Varela with an urgent dispatch ordering that on
no account were the troops to touch these animals as all
of them were being used for research purposes and all of
them had been inoculated with various diseases, the one
more horrible than the other. It was too late, and the
officer in command merely sent for the regimental medical
officer, so that, without saying anything to frighten
the men, he could keep them under observation. It
is General Varela who tells the story, and he ends by

m

STALEMATE ON THE MADRID FRONT

saying, “Only one man was taken ill, and lie sutiered from
lead poisoning, having been shot in the stomach.”

The Reds at the outset kept six Russian tanks in the
Western Park with which they made frequent sorties
and raids into the centre of the University City. “It
was annoying,” one of Colonel \ ague's staff, a stout,
elderly major, told me, “to be taken by surprise by one of
these visitors. One of them chased me twice round one
of the hospital pavilions before I could find a doorway to
talrp shelter in. I had only my revolver with me, and all
I could do was to keep a corner of the building between me
and the great lumbering monster, which was, so I thought
at the time, making straight after me. On subsequent
reflection, I doubt whether its driver had even seen me,
but at the moment I was very breathless.” But the
Legionaries had by this time found ways of dealing with
these tanks . They carried petrol bottles, which they
threw under the tanks, and thus burning out the rubber
wheels that keep the caterpillar treads distended, brought
the tanks to a standstill. Many tanks were disabled in
the University City, and finally the Reds withdrew them
from that sector for more advantageous service in the
open field.

The next manoeuvre of the Reds was to adopt an
extensive policy of mining. In the University City two
pavilions of the Clinical Hospital one day went up in
the air. The Nationalist engineers could not understand
it at first, as it was quite impossible for the Reds to have
mined so far. Somebody then thought of the immense
new system of sewers which was being built for the new
quarters north of the University. A manhole was quickly
found and a squad of Legionaries sent down. They found
Red miners working, driving another gallery under

195

THE SPANISH WAR

another building, and charging at them with the bayonet
wiped them out. There was much desultory fighting in
these huge drains until the Nationalists drove the Reds
completely out and then blew up the passages leading
into the city.

Other Reds made a similar attempt in Carabanchel,
south of Madrid, but were captured. In the same quarter
they hewed an immense gallery over five hundred yards
long, intending to blow up the Nationalist barricade
which dominated the Toledo Bridge. Colonel Tella’s
engineers had warning of this attempt, however, from a
deserter, and, when the Reds were not working, pierced
a gallery of their own right under the Red sap. Explo¬
sives were brought and tamped down, and the counter¬
mine was set off, just at the moment the Red miners
were bringing up their own charges. There was a terrific
series of explosions, and that Red mine ceased to exist.

The situation at the end of November was one of stale¬
mate within the University City. The Nationalists
could not advance, try they ever so, and on the other hand
the Reds could not drive them out. The situation was
one of danger, however, for the Nationalists, as their
communications with the rear depended on so narrow a
passage with the possibility of Red attacks from three
quarters simultaneously. That the Reds did not profit
more from this is extraordinary.

It is easy to reason after the event and to say that the
attack on Madrid from the front ought never to have
been made, or that the troops ought to have been with¬
drawn once the attack failed. As regards the first pro¬
position there was, in the early days of November, a
reasonable possibility that a series of surprise attacks
might win through. The withdrawal after failure might

196

STALEMATE OX THE MADRID FRONT

have been the best military solution, but it was politically
impossible, as the Nationalist situation throughout Spain
w T onld. have suffered from so open a confession of failure.
It was therefore necessary to retain the University City
position at any cost, pending further operations which
would link it more securely to the left flank of the Nation¬
alist army. It has often been found in Spanish military
history that operations have been conducted with great
ease, and then suddenly in some city the fiercest resistance
has developed. It was so in the days of the Cartha¬
ginians and the Romans, illustrated by the historic sieges
of Saguntum and Numantia; it was so during the middle
ages, and again in the days of Napoleon. The Spaniard
is a desperate fighter behind walls, the fatalism which so .
many have inherited from the Moorish strain—the normal
result of the centuries of Moorish rule over the central.

. plateau—serving them well in. such a form of fighting.

Once more the attention of General Franco’s staff
was turned to the Brunete-Casa de Campo road as the
basis for a fresh attack northwards calculated to clear away
Red resistance from Boadilia del Monte and take the
front line as far as the Corunna road. It took some time
before such an attack could be adequately prepared....

The tangle, meantime, of the lines all round Madrid,
and especially in the Casa de Campo, was such that it
became very dangerous to motor up to any part of the front
line—of the exact position of which one was ignorant—
for fear of driving right into the Red forces. There were
no continuous lines of any kind, and the defence posts
placed on roads leading to Red positions were often in
ignorance as to whether there were not further Nationalist
.defence points ahead of them, and so they did not always
stop cars driving past them at full speed.

197

THE SPANISH WAR

A typical instance was when I was driving to the front
with nay French friend d’Hospital. We had a young
Spanish guide with us from the Avila Press bureau. He
confessed, however, that he did not know the road and
asked us to go in front. We were then heading for Getafe
towards the Toledo Bridge. Both of us insisted on driving
slowly with frequent pauses to consult our maps and to
inspect the horizon. There were few soldiers about and,
as so often happens in war, none of them knew anything
about the position of the advanced lines. “Colonel Tella’s
column,” they said, “advanced this morning; we don’t
know how far he has gone.” Our Spanish guide came up
to ask why we were waiting, and said, “Let us drive on
quickly and we will inquire at Carabanchel Bajo as to
where we can find Colonel Telia.” He was somewhat
confused when I pointed out that if we drove on fast,
as he suggested, we would not be reaching Carabanchel
at all but the Red lines at the Toledo Bridge. The poor
young fellow had misread his map. We went on very
slowly, d’Hospital getting out and walking forward
over every slight rise. Finally we drew up our cars
about two thousand yards from the bridge-head. We
were at Colonel Tella’s headquarters; the front line
was about one hundred yards away, and the Reds not
five hundred yards farther on. Fortunately we had
been screened from view by a row of plane trees and a
six-foot bank.

We went forward and, looking through a loopholed
wall, could see the Red positions on the railway sidings.
Colonel Telia himself joined us a few minutes later. Tall
and handsome, his face was patched with plaster where he
had received cuts from fragments of a tank shell. He was
courteous, but not too pleased that four large cars should

198

STALEMATE ON THE MADRID FRONT

have been brought right up to his headquarters, and we
had to tell our chauffeurs to turn the cars and take them
back past the level crossing in the rear where they were
effectively out of sight behind a fold in the ground. The
Colonel laughed when he heard how cautiously we had
come, and said, “You were quite right. I have not barri¬
caded or cut the road, and if you had been travelling fast
you would have run right into the Red positions on the
bridgehead.”

Not so many weeks afterwards I was in the Casa de
Campo when we learnt that a car containing four Spanish
journalists, including the director of the Her alio ie
Aragon and a South American journalist, had been cap¬
tured by the Reds on the road to Pozuelo. They had
missed the line of Press cars and, entering the Casa de
Campo, had taken the wrong turning with disastrous
results.

A final warning that the roads were not always secure
came in January, when three Press cars were driving from
Avila to the front along the Brunete road. There had
been Red counter-attacks for weeks in that particular
neighbourhood, and several of us evinced surprise that
we should be taken by such a route. However, nothing
happened until we actually arrived at Brunete. There I
noticed at once that the village was in a state of defence,
and that two field-guns were pointing straight down the
road along which we had come. We did not stop to make
inquiries but, branching off to the right, continued
towards the safety of Navalcarhero deep behind the
Nationalist lines. On the way we passed two tabors of
Moorish infantry, and when we reached Navalcariiero we
learnt that a minute or so after we had passed the cross¬
roads Russian tanks had appeared and had actually held

199

THE SPANISH WAR

the road for about a quarter of an hour until the Red
infantry attack was repulsed and two of the tanks cap¬
tured. It was a narrow shave.

In the same way Reds often drove across into the
Nationalist front lines, and three British and American
newspapermen, including Mr. Weaver, of the News
Chronicle , came bowling one day along the road between
Madrid and Aranjuez and were promptly made prisoners.
In this case they were dealt with sympathetically, and after
being questioned were sent to the French frontier. The
same treatment was accorded an honorary attache of the
British embassy in Madrid, Mr. E. C. Lance, and the
sub-director of the Anglo-South American bank, Mr.
William Hale, who also lost their way and wandered into
the lines held by General Varela.

It was about this time that the Reds made an attempt,
the first for many months, to show initiative by dealing
a blow which might have changed the character of the
war. They brought a body of troops and artillery to
Navahermosa and Los Navalmorales, south of Talavera de
la Reina and on the left bank of the Tagus, and on
November 24 launched what purported to be a lightning
attack on the town. For weeks afterwards the Red
communique, incidentally repeated by the B.B.C. in their
news bulletins, announced the capture of Talavera by the
Reds. Had this been so it would have been an extremely
severe blow for General Franco. The main road of com¬
munication between the Madrid front and the rest of the
country would have been cut, and all traffic would have
had to be diverted to a single mountainous road via Avila.
Huge supplies of stores and equipment would have been
lost and, granted that the Reds were in numbers and
prepared to put up a fight, with the river at their backs,

STALEMATE ON THE MADRID FRONT

they might have thrown General Franco’s Madrid army
into a state of considerable .confusion.

I was at the time sleeping on one of the top floors of
Talavera’s main hotel, the Espanola. Previous bombard¬
ments had hit the roof; there were no window panes in
my room, which was very draughty, while the next-door
room had been completely wrecked by a shell. There,
early in the morning, I was awakened by a persistent
knocking at the door. It was the chauffeur Juan, who had
come to tell me that the Reds were swarming down
towards the Tagus and that three of their batteries were
then shelling the* town. Juan added; “I have got the car
ready on the Avila road, and if the Reds do cross the river
and enter the town wt can always get away in time.” . I
complimented him on his thoughtfulness, but said that
1 did not think there would be any need to ran.

I could now 7 hear the sounds of shells bursting quite
clearly, though they were obviously being directed to the
east of the town near the flying-field. On my way to the
roof of the hotel, whence a fine view could be obtained,
I met a Spanish staff officer, who appeared surprisingly
calm, considering that the information he had to impart
was that there were only some three hundred ill-trained
militia in the town, and two heavy mortars which would
take at least an hour to put in battery. From the roof it
was easy to see the cliff rising steeply from the river. On
the left-hand side there were the white buildings of an
old farm-house, while on the right the road from Los
Navalmorales could just be distinguished. A line of .tiny
dots .moving through the brushwood on the cliff side
showed where the Red advance guard and scouts were,
audit was evident that they were already under a hot fire
from the militia machine-gun posts on our side of the

201

THE SPANISH WAR

Tagus and on the very fringe of the town, which here
runs right down to the river.

It was then about eight o’clock in the morning. It was
a dull November day, the sun obscured behind a sort of
grey mist through which its pale yellow rays filtered only
occasionally, while low on the horizon were the pitch-
black clouds foretelling a storm.

Fully half an hour passed, the intermittent shelling
gradually coming nearer until some of the shells were
flying right overhead to pitch behind us on the station
road. The Reds did not seem to be making much pro¬
gress, and nobody could understand why their artillery
was firing at random instead of registering on the bridge¬
heads and on the Nationalists’ machine-gun posts and
then keeping on those targets while an assault was being
prepared. It is true that there seemed too little artillery
to give the infantry sufficient backing for the crossing of
a wide and fairly rapid stream, and the question might
have been asked why the infantry assault had not been
made without the preliminary warning of an ineffectual
bombardment at the break of day. Down below in the
streets I could hear harsh words of military command,
and a company of militia hurriedly withdrawn from guard
at the station and along the railway fine went by at a
swinging double down towards the river. That made
another hundred men, and it seemed certain that four
hundred men with rifles and machine-guns ought to be
able to hold the passage of the river against so undecided
a foe.

We kept searching the crest of the cliff with our glasses
for signs of the enemy main forces. Twice three horse¬
men rode into our fine of vision and then disappeared
towards the white farm-house. Then there came a line of

202

STALEMATE ON THE MADRID FRONT
motor-lorries which, did the same thing. The two last
lorries had been converted into armoured cars.

Suddenly a woman on the roof cried out: “Loot there!
and pointed to the Credos hills behind us. There, in the
grey sky, flying low, were squadron after squadron of
heavy bombing ’planes, small chaser ’planes preceding them
or flying on either side. Soon the roar of their engines
was plainly audible and they passed directly overhead,
reaching the Red positions on the cliff a second or so later.
Followed volcanoes of black smoke and bursts of flame.
First they were on the cliff’s edge, showing us how near
the mass of the enemy’s infantry had come, and then they
centred round the white farm-house. Round and round
the bombing ’planes circled, dropping bomb after bomb
and, when they had no more, flying off for fresh supplies.
Meanwhile the chaser ’planes had not been idle. They
had formed themselves into an infernal faraniole, appear¬
ing and disappearing through the black clouds and the
blacker smoke left by the bomb explosions. The faran-
dole of ’planes started high up in the clouds and then
swept down, low down, over the road and the farm-house,
their machine-guns spitting flame as they did so. Then
on the other side of the smoke, the chain of ’planes, -risible
once more, rose in a great left-hand sweep as the chasers
regained height, still keeping their positions in the endless
line and then, veering, dived once more to carry on their
task.

For just one hour and a half this manoeuvre of bombing
and machine-gunning went on, and then a dull roar and
a great flash of flame in a garden beneath us showed that
the two heavy mortars had got to work. By ten o clock
the ’planes had gone, the mortars had resumed their
silence, the tiny dots we had once seen on the cliff side,

203

THE SPANISH WAR

long obscured by mist and smoke, had disappeared, and
all was calm and quiet. The Red attack had been re¬
pulsed. That night the Red wireless complacently
announced how far they had chased the Nationalists from
Talavera de la Reina and how many of their battalions
held the town. There was cheering and rejoicing among
the Reds in Madrid, but there was cursing and confusion
among the Reds at Los Navalmorales, where the real
state of affairs was known.

Some days later I was allowed to view the battle-field.
Two hundred dead, I was told, had already been burnt or
buried, and yet bodies strewed the fields and the roads in
every direction. There were two batteries of artillery
with wheels smashed and muzzles pointing skywards; there
were burnt and damaged lorries by the score. Immense
craters showed where the bombs had fallen—here next to
a battery, there in a concentration of men. The files of
men shot down by machine-gun fire were obviously trying
to reach their line of motor transport. The lorries were
trying in vain to turn when bombs fell among them. It
was a disaster. From every sign it was evident that the
attacking force must have numbered some three thousand
men, while its total casualties in dead and wounded must
have accounted for at least one half that force. So terror-
stricken were the Reds that, I was told, they evacuated
Los Navalmorales that afternoon and fled some twenty
miles farther south, fearing they might be followed up by
a light mobile Nationalist column. The latter, however,
who had no orders for pushing far south of the Tagus,
contented themselves with holding the heights and
digging during the next few days a fine of trenches to
prevent any future danger of a surprise assault.

For weeks afterwards it was arranged that troops resting

204

STALEMATE ON THE MADRID FRONT .

from the line should do so in echelon along the Tagus so
that ample forces would always be available if the Reds
were to renew their offensive.

The air arm had thus been rapidly mobilised and had
crushed a dangerous attack entirely by itself and without
the necessity of waiting for the much slower arrival of
infantry and artillery. How far this can be taken as a
lesson for future warfare depends solely on the fact that
the Red column, never dreaming of an air counter-attack,
had no anti-aircraft guns with them. Perhaps, also, the
latest model of electrically fired and controlled Russian
anti-aircraft gun, used later round Madrid, was not then
in Red possession. This and other modem anti-aircraft
guns, used by the Nationalists, have proved so deadly to
low-flying aircraft that it would seem doubtful if it could
be hoped that the air arm "would always have such instan¬
taneous success. The effect of anti-aircraft guns of great
speed, range, and accuracy, was later such that it appeared
that wherever these guns were in sufficient numbers
bombing ’planes would have to fly at such a height as
would render accurate bombing and accurate observation
extremely difficult.

It was evident that the Reds had been kept carefully
informed of the number of men in garrison at Talavera
de la Reina, for it could not have been a mere coincidence
that they attacked just on the day when there were .only
a few militiamen in the town. It had been noticed, also,
that the Red air raids, which were frequent, only took
place when the Nationalist chaser ’planes were not in the,
vicinity. This naturally led to a strict search for spies,
not only at Talavera, but also in other centres. .

For many miles the Tagus, ill guarded, formed the only
line of demarcation between the Reds and the Nationalists,

205

THE SPANISH WAR

and it was obviously easy for any determined man who
had obtained valuable information to swim across and
take his news to the nearest Red telephone post. It was
realised how this was being done, as it was known that
many Red sympathisers remained in Talavera and its
vicinity. Counter-espionage officers were hurried into
the area, a stricter control of the movements of peasants
and townsfolk was instituted, and a number of alleged spies
were quickly captured. Some of them were removed to
some central prison; others were tried; many were shot.
Among the accused were a doctor and two pretty nurses
from the Red Cross hospital. The doctor, I know, was
shot, but I could not find out what happened to the
nurses.

It was only a little later that three very daring spies,
one young girl of nineteen—a probationary school¬
teacher—and two young men were caught in the daring
act of maintaining a secret short-wave wireless trans¬
mitter at Salamanca itself, not a thousand yards from
General Headquarters.

Suspicion first attached to one of the two young men
who had managed to join the Spanish Falangist organisa¬
tion. Ill-health prevented him from being sent to a fight¬
ing unit and he was able to remain behind in Salamanca
and, mixing with his comrades and at cafes, he un¬
doubtedly picked up a great deal of valuable information.
Headquarters counter-espionage service knew that there
was considerable leakage, and the money carelessly spent
by this young man entertaining soldiers back from the
front, and clerks and messengers from the headquarters
offices, attracted some attention. The first inquiry
seemed to absolve him from all suspicion, and it was only
as a precautionary measure that it was resolved to keep an

206

STALEMATE ON THE MADRID FRONT

occasional watch on him. Weeks went by and nothing
happened to revive suspicions. The young man led a
regular life, was not seen to consort with anybody sus¬
picious, and was of a pious disposition, going regularly to
church, even in the week.

It was at church, however, that the first real clue was
found. One of the counter-espionage agents noticed that
twice when the young man left his place on a faldstool
next to a pillar, a young and very beautiful girl about
twenty came and knelt in prayer at the same place, but
that she appeared while so doing to be taking a piece of
paper from under the cushion. The detective normally
would have dismissed this as a lovers’ stratagem, but
he felt in the circumstances that it would be well to find
out who the girl was. She was followed, and when her
identity was established it was found that at the school
where she had passed out as a probationary teacher she
held very advanced views, and it was for that reason that,
since the Civil War, her services had been dispensed with
by the scholastic authorities.

It was obvious that the closest investigation was neces¬
sary. Half a dozen of the most skilled secret service
agents under the command of an officer were put on the
trail. The young Falangist church-goer met two soldiers
fresh from the front who, carelessly, over glasses of
Manzanilla, told him the exact moves of two important
columns. The young man duly went to church, but
before the pretty blonde arrived, his message was taken,
photographed, and put back In place. The first check
which, incidentally, was a confirmation of the theory that
dangerous spies were at work, w r as that the note was found
to be in cipher.

It was evident that the girl w ? as the second link in a

207

THE SPANISH WAR

chain of espionage, and to find out how the news was sent
on to the Reds it was necessary not to frighten her but to
watch her all the time and see what she did with the
messages left by the young man. After being shadowed
it was found that with another young fellow, an appren¬
tice at an electrical engineer’s, she frequently went to the
Salamanca cemetery. The couple were seen three times
going in late in the evening, but each time by chance
shook off their followers, who did not see them leave.
Inquiry was made discreetly of the cemetery attendants,
two of whom said they frequently came at night, and two
others that they were always there early in the morning.
The immediate conclusion was that the couple hid some¬
where all night in the cemetery and used it as the base for
wireless communications with the Reds. A search was
ordered and after three hours the problem was solved.

As in many Spanish cemeteries, Salamanca has a great
wall in which are pierced, somewhat like a honeycomb, a
series of small cavities, each large enough to contain one
coffin. The spies had entered an empty vault and had
cut a small doorway through the stone slab connecting it
with the next cavity which had its coffin. They had then
completely cut down the slabs connecting the next three
cavities, and piling the old and crumbling coffins together
in a corner, thus provided a small free area in which they
placed a short-wave transmission set which, by crouching
down, they could work. The power was obtained by
tapping the electric fight supply wires of an empty villa
standing just outside the cemetery and bringing the
current through the walls to the vaults.

The scheme of the Red spies was almost perfect.
Nobody, they thought, would ever look into vaults which
each had its coffin, and by never meeting the men who

208

STALEMATE ON THE MADRID FRONT

provided the information they thought they had covered
themselves in the event of any accidental betrayal.

The three of them were arrested an hour after the dis¬
covery in the cemetery. A few slips in code containing
military information were found. One of them only,
however, was in the handwriting of the young man whose
activities had first aroused suspicions. The young girl,
evidently the main mover in the plot, refused indignantly
to_ betray for any consideration who were her other
assistants. After a court martial thev were al three shot.
An attempt was made for a little while to transmit false
news to the Reds so they might believe nothing had been
found out, but it soon became apparent that the Reds
paid no attention to the messages. It was evident, there¬
fore, that either there was a secret password prefixed to
every message, or else the undetected members of the
organisation had managed to get a warning through to
their headquarters.

At Brihuega, when the Nationalist troops entered the
town in March, they found a very similar plan to send
news to the Reds, who were even then preparing the
series of formidable counter-attacks which were to hold
up for so long the attack on the sectors east of Madrid.
By this time expert wireless engineers with each army
were entrusted with the task of detecting illicit trans¬
mission. They found that somebody w r as talking in code
to the Reds from a small village just outside Brihuega,.
but a close search failed to reveal anything that looked at
all suspicious. A chance remark by a child, “I must take-
a sausage to teacher, 55 disclosed the secret. It w r as known
that the woman schoolmistress was a Red, and as she was
.missing it was thought she had gone away. The child
was therefore questioned and, bursting into tears, he

209

THE SPANISH WAS.

explained that the schoolmistress had hidden herself in
the village bread-oven and that she had told him and two
others that they were to bring her food every night and
tell her all that was happening in the near-by town.

The Government troops, she had told them, would soon
be back, and if they betrayed her or failed to do her
bidding their families would be taken out and shot. The
children, who had already seen so many Red atrocities,
were terrorised and did all she bade them. She was shot
on the very day that the Red troops returned, as she had
said they would, and were fighting the Nationalists just
outside Brihuega. But for a child’s careless remark having
been overheard she could have got away and joined
them.

There were these and many other genuine instances of
spy activities, and there were undoubtedly many who got
away and were never discovered. But there also existed
for some time an unpleasant spy mania, such as grows up
in war time in any country. There were also a number
of malicious accusations. It was amusing so many years
after the Great War to see posted those warnings against
indiscreet conversation which had been seen everywhere in
Great Britain and France during 1914-18.

It must in justice be remembered that many espionage

services were busy, and that all the information was not
necessarily being reserved for the Reds on the one side or
the Nationalists on the other. The very latest weapons
of war were being used on both sides, tanks and anti¬
tank guns, aeroplanes and anti-aircraft guns, to take two
examples. They were being used in actual conditions of
war, and it was of great concern not only to the nations
which provided these weapons to know how they were
being used, but also to their rivals. Spain must, therefore,

210

STALEMATE ON THE MADRID FRONT

have been full of the secret agents of half a dozen differ¬
ent powers,. Agents striving to protect their own secrets
and agents trying to detect others’ secrets must have
rubbed shoulders from one end of Spain to the other.
There was so much to guard and so much to detect.

The value of the Spanish war to military experts has
obviously been great. Though small numbers of men
have been engaged—that is, small in comparison with the
immense armies that a future world war would entail—
they have been, especially in the later stages, amply
supplied with all the death-dealing apparatus of modem
war, save gas. The machine-gun, for instance, has shown
once again that she is queen of the battlefield. It takes
a great deal of skill, of artillery, and of tanks, to overcome
a position w T ell defended with automatic weapons.
Artillery has shown so far little improvement, except in
range and in mobility. The tank has been vastly im¬
proved, and there have been medium, light-medium, and
whippet tanks in quantity. As far .as I know, however,
none of the tank mastodons, thirty to forty-ton monsters,
have been seen on Spanish soil. They are all formidable
weapons, specially designed to destroy the machine-gun
crew, but they have all met with a terrible enemy. Fire
from petrol canisters, hand grenades and, above all, .the
terrible anti-tank gun. This gun, small and easily moved,,
can take shelter anywhere and does not seem much bigger
than, a wheel-barrow. Yet it can throw its shell, three
thousand yards, and at the range when it usually engages
a tank, about eight hundred to a thousand yards, it puts
two shells out of three on its target. It is sufficient to
have seen tanks brought to a standstill by a shell from one
of. these guns to realise its stopping power. Whenever
one of these guns and one, two, or even three tanks ate

211

THE SPANISH WAR

confronted, the odds normally are in favour of the gun.

It is small, stationary, and hidden. The tanks are large
and mobile, and have at some time or other normally to
come over a sky-line. At that moment the gun opens fire
at very great speed. If its crew works well, and unless by
some chance one of the tanks happens to spot it at once,
the whole three are doomed. Of course in warfare on
a large scale it is probable that tanks would only be sent
out in numbers after a preliminary bombardment with
heavier tanks behind them putting up a barrage so as to
disconcert anti-tank gun crews and keep them from being
in a position of watchful observation until too late. But
the anti-tank gun has definitely come to stay in the
modern army as a weapon to accompany at least every
battalion, if not every company.

These conclusions were visible from the ordinary ob¬
servations of any war correspondent who himself had had
any experience of military matters. I always took the
greatest care never to intrude into what were obviously
private affairs, or to notice and mark the calibre of guns,
the size and weight of tanks or their speed, or the type
of aeroplanes and the emplacement of anti-aircraft guns.
I could not see that such secret technical details would
be of interest to newspaper readers. When the military
history of the Spanish Civil War comes to be written—and
there are many, not necessarily Spanish, who will try their
hand at it-—the historians will probably have a wealth of
detail on matters now secret, but which owing to lapse
of time will by then have become public property. In
Spain, at least, it is best not to be ahead of one s time.

ZIZ

IX

THE ATTACKS ON THE CORUNNA ROAD
WEST OF MADRID

DECEMBER 1936-JANUARY 1937

THE JARAMA AND GUADALAJARA

'T'HERE followed, after the setbacks on the Madrid
front, a period of many weeks of desultory fighting.
The Reds counter-attacked here and there, but without
much effect, while the Nationalists dug themselves in,
prepared winter quarters and ranged the market gardens
in their possession round Madrid for winter vegetables,
and especially cabbages, which are grown in immense
quantities.

This innocent pillaging—the owners of the market
gardens were either dead or far away and the vegetables
would have rotted in the ground—was the cause of an
unhappy incident which plunged a brigade of Falangist
militia into mourning. All the way from Merida there
had marched with one of the Falangist regiments a happy
and bright young girl, with raven-black hair and flashing
eyes, known as Juanita. She was a good girl and looked
after the men of her regiment like an elder sister. She
mended as much of their clothing as her busy needle
could attend to, she looked after their kitchen, and when
there was any food to be obtained in a village she saw
that her Falangists got it, and that is a difficult task
when one is marching with such experienced foragers
as the Legionaries and the Regulares. When there was a

213

THE SPANISH WAR

fight she tended the wounded, and many a blue-shirted
Falangist has laid his head on her lap, held her hand and
whispered, “Mother,” as he drew his dying breath.

I spoke to many of her men after her death, and there
was not one who did not take off his blue forage cap and
stand with bent head as he spoke of the “heroine” of the
regiment. One night her men were in the front line
in Carabanchel. There was not much doing, only a shot
from time to time, but the food was poor and scanty.
Juanita had the day before brought up the kitchen equip¬
ment to a little sunken road some hundred yards back.

A bright fire was burning, but there was little to cook.
Calling for two volunteers with sacks, she told them she
would go back to the vegetable gardens behind Leganes
and bring up cabbages, carrots, and other vegetables
which would help to make a hot stew. The three started
out across the fields when there came a sudden burst
' of machine-gun fire, which sent them all tumbling down
for shelter. The machine-gun continued to stutter its
message of death at intervals, while the two men and the
girl lay close to the damp brown earth. Finally she turned
and said: “We must be moving, or else we will be too late
to bring the stuff back in time for the boys’ dinner.”
With that she draped the sacks over her shoulders as a
rough camouflage and, getting up, began to run forward.
There was another burst of fire and she fell, never to rise
again. It was at nightfall they brought her body in. It
was three days later, when her regiment had been re¬
lieved, that she was buried, and her coffin was carried by
her boys to the cemetery, where all stood weeping as,
with the rites of the Church, she was committed to her
rest. The city of Merida, whence she came, as a token of
their esteem for her high and pure character and her

214

THE ATTACKS ON THE CORUNNA ROAD

unstained heroism, is erecting a monument to the gallant
Falangist girl, always to be remembered in Spain as
Juanita of Merida.

One of the points the Reds continually counter¬
attacked during this period was the Nationalist line
between Villaverde and Pinto, on the extreme right flank,
in the angle between the Jarama river and the Tagus.
The Reds were in force at Aranjuez and on the left bank
of the Jarama, and with easy communications both north
and south they could move their forces where they liked
to attack the Nationalists, who only held a few scattered
posts.

I was present at one of these attacks, a particularly un¬
lucky one for the Reds. It was towards the end of
November. A Red brigade moved out to attack Sesena,
just north of Aranjuez. The Red attack was supported
on its right flank by a small cavalry corps from south of
Madrid. The Red advance guard consisted of two trains.
The first was armoured. It consisted of three heavily
steel-plated trucks. Two were pushed in front of the
engine and one was behind it. The front trucks carried
two light field-guns each and four machine-guns. Be h i n d
this steel-clad monster came, at a distance of several
hundred yards, a troop train carrying eight hundred men.

The Nationalist advance posts, when they saw the
armoured train come into sight along the line, immedi¬
ately sent back, by telephone, advice of the impending
attack. The armoured train steamed to within a hundred
yards of the point where the line had been cut, and then
opened fire with its artillery and machine-guns on the
whole of the Nationalist positions. Eight hundred yards
behind it, hidden by a slope, the transport train stopped,
and the Red troops it carried began to deploy, while some

215

THE SPANISH WAR

three thousand yards farther back a motor column, carry¬
ing a second line of troops and three batteries of artillery,
appeared.

But at the moment when the alarm reached the head¬
quarters of General Monasterio, it found the whole of
that cavalry corps and its accompanying mechanical units
not only very much awake, but actually in marching
formation. It had happened that a couple of the cavalry
units were being withdrawn that day for a minor opera¬
tion on the opposite or left flank, and that, General
Monasterio having chosen that occasion for an entire re¬
grouping of his forces, all of them were assembled.

The General himself was inspecting a cavalry squadron
when an orderly dashed up with the urgent message.
There was a sudden grouping of staff officers, all on horse¬
back, while the General dictated his orders. The first
sent a battery of horse-drawn artillery, followed by two
others drawn by tractors, to a point south of Sesena where,
though covered by the slopes, they could direct an intense
artillery fire on the railway embankment where the
armoured train had come to a stop. Other orders sent
squadron after squadron and motor-carried units, the one
after the other, hurrying to their places in the line. The
attack had begun at eight o’clock in the morning. At
half-past eight the first Nationalist shells began to fall
round the armoured train. One hit was scored within
five minutes on the first protected truck. The shell cut
right through the plate and blew up one of the gun
turrets. The second truck was hit twice and the loco¬
motive was hit by shell fragments. The Red officer in
charge of the armoured train saw he could not bring his
one remaining gun to bear on the Nationalist batteries,
for the good reason that he did not know where they were.

216

THE ATTACKS OX THE CORUXXA ROAD

His own. support batteries were still being hauled down
from their lorries three thousand yards behind Mm, So
he decided to retire and slowly moved back, the loco¬
motive whistling all the time to signal to the troop tram,

which was on the same line, to withdraw" also. Shells kept
dropping round the retiring tram ana on or near the track,
and at nine o’clock both armoured train and troop train
were steaming back towards Aranjuez as fast as they could.

Imagine the despair of the Red militia, eight hundred
of them. They had deployed in a thin line, 'were already
looking back over their shoulders wondering if the second
line and the artillery would soon be arriving, when sud¬
denly they saw dismounted troopers lining the slopes in

front of them, while fire from a dozen machine-guns came
singing overhead. And then the train which had brought
them up and the armoured train on whose guns they had
pinned their faith were steaming to the rear as fast as
their pistons would take them. It was more than they
could stand, jumping up from hedges, from roadsides,
and from ditches, they broke and ran; they ran after the
trains, and as the railway line made a curve some of them
actually caught them up and a dozen or so were able to
scramble on to the trucks of the armoured train. The
other was too far ahead. That was the moment I came
up from the Pinto road and was able to see the end of the
fight. The Nationalist artillery turned on to the Red
concentration in the rear and that speedily disappeared,
while the front line machine-guns dealt effectively with
the runaways from the Red advance guard. About one
hundred prisoners were made, and that afternoon three
hundred dead bodies were found before the Nationalist
lines. When all was over the Red right flank squadron of
cavalry appeared, riding leisurely up a ravine, as if they

217

THE SPANISH WAR

had come to see what all the firing was about. The speed
with which they executed the right-about when they
caught sight of the field of battle did credit to their
mobility if to nothing else.

There were other less spectacular counter-attacks. In
the University City and in the Casa de Campo, hardly a
week went by without some bloody surprise attack or
raid, but in general we knew little of these except from
the laconic versions given in the communiques on either
side or from the news which came back to us a day or so
later and therefore too tardily for such local affairs.

There was little at that moment for war correspondents
to do. We mused over maps with staff officers and told
them what General Franco ought to do to win the war;
we talked about past fights and what ought to have been
done by either side on half a dozen occasions, and in fact
we won the war for either Reds or Nationalists with ease
over a dirty cafe table in Talavera, drinking rather musty
Manzanilla or tepid beer. Most of us complained bitterly
of the food we were having. The meat and everything
else were of quite good quality, but we could not get
accustomed to the strong-flavoured oil and the general
fashion of cooking. Then we discovered a birthday. It
was that of Mr. Victor Console, the photographer, and
we decided that not only would we have a celebration, but
that the Press would cook its own dinner. Half a dozen
of us stormed the markets of Talavera; we bought turkeys,
fresh soles, cauliflowers, and a host of tinned stuffs, which
I remember included mushrooms and truffles. Victor
Console had volunteered to make a sole Marguery, I
had said I would stuff and roast the turkey, while some¬
body else, I forget who, volunteered to serve the choufieur
au gratin. The manager of our hotel gave us the

218

THE ATTACKS ON THE CORUNNA ROAD

run of his kitchen, and while we were preparing the meal
I remember we had as interested onlookers officers from
the Legion and from General Varela’s staff.

I had some difficulty about the stuffing. Nobody knew
what sausage meat was, and when I looked at the Spanish
sausages I realised that their mysterious insides would be
of little use to me. So, accompanied by an enthusiastic
American helper, Mr. Reynold Packard, of the United
Press, I trudged off to the butcher’s. There we picked
out a large, clean-looking piece of fresh pork and some
calves’ liver and asked them to put it all through the
mincing machine. There was some hesitation about tins,
and then it was explained that the only sausage machine
in the town was out of order. However, the butcher’s
boy offered to chop it all up on the block, and when he
had finished we decided that it was quite minced enough
and carried it away. I made a great amount of stuffing,
cooked with onions, not a little garlic, two big tins of
truffles, and four of mushrooms, and had it all sewn in the
turkeys which, though somewhat skinny, were yet young
and not tough. I watched the birds very closely when
they were put in the oven, each covered with a leaf of
pork fat and with a large gobbet of butter in the roasting
pan. I watched closely, because I could see the Spanish
cook’s look of disapproval, and I knew that she was only
awaiting my departure to open the oven and pour a nice
pot of hot water round the birds, just to prevent them
burning.” I heard her say so to the kitchen maid, and
when I spoke to her and said “Certainly not,” she merely

muttered and turned away.

There was work for many hands, including a fruit salad
and the preparation for Console’s sole. He wanted
shrimps and we could only get prawns; he wanted mussels

219

THE SPANISH WAR

and there were only large cockles. But we dealt with
prawns and cockles while he got ready the sauce, and so
the sole, which we all said should be called sole Tala-
vera , was prepared. The meal was a great success. We
started ten at table, but before we had gone very far we
were sixteen, many guests in uniform having readily
accepted the invitation to “pot luck.” We started with
giblet soup, and then came the fish with some white
Spanish wine somebody had unearthed somewhere. Then
the turkeys were served, and there followed the cauli¬
flower and the fruit salad. It was a feast, and never has
there been more laughter and good humour. Three
of our guests now lie somewhere near University City or
Jarama river—good fellows, good companions, and good
soldiers. I was told that my turkeys and their stuffing
were excellent. Some time later when I gave a repeat
performance of my culinary talent at Avila, critics said it
was not so good. My modest belief is that the cooking
was the same both times, but that we all brought a better
appetite to the first occasion.

These journalist dinners were later, in Avila, quite
frequent. We had a lady journalist, Mrs. Eleanor
Packard, who made us apple-tarts; we had a Frenchman,
M. Botto, who cooked the most excellent braised beef and
also a gargantuan fot au feu, which, from its size and
magnificence, will long be remembered. It was brought
up steaming hot in no fewer than six dishes—vegetables,
meat, ox-tail, calves’ head and shin, marrow bones, and
boiled chicken, and was served with one of the best brain
sauces I have ever tasted. M. Botto was not only a
talented journalist, but also a cook of distinction. But I
remember seeing one of the Spanish officers among our
guests looking at the wasteful piles of provender, and then

220

THE ATTACKS ON THE CORUNNA ROAD

remaining silent with, an absent air. Many of ns fel
silent too, for we knew that he was thinking of his aged
mother, living in Madrid amid the Red terror, and that
he was wondering what she might have on her table,
it was a period of change among the journalists* corps.
Many left because they were tired or ill, or because they
had been recalled. Others left because the Nationalist
Government, or rather that expression of It formed by
the Press and propaganda department of Salamanca, so
rarely well advised, thought that their absence would be
better than their presence. It is seldom that the Press
department of any government acts with consistent wis¬
dom, but the Inconsistency of the one set up at Salamanca
by the Nationalist Government must have created some¬
what of a record. Those journalists who were heart and
soul in favour of the movement went on working for it,
in despite of it. They suffered rebuffs almost without
number. Responsible war correspondents could not see
any member of the omnipotent Press Bureau at Sala¬
manca ■without filling in a form and waiting for something
like an hour. The details for the obtaining of passes and
visas were slow and complicated, and, generally speaking,
every conceivable obstacle was placed in the way of the
war correspondent in National Spanish territory. Per¬
sonally, I was better treated than most, perhaps because
of the influence of the Daily Mail , perhaps because I was
better known. Despite this, I can well remember during
my frequent spells of waiting in the antechambers of
Headquarters at Salamanca, having had time to read the
two volumes of Boswell’s Life of Johnson.

The .pity of it was that, for Nationalist Spain, so much
good- effort., .was being wasted. Red propaganda was being
better and more speedily handled. Cables containing

221

THE SPANISH WAR

Red propaganda, from Madrid or Valencia, were trans¬
mitted with a fairly lenient censorship and with a mini¬
mum of delay. Our cables took, according to circum¬
stance, often fifteen to twenty hours, never less than four
or five. The censorship was often rigorous and rarely
consistent. It would ill become me to scoff at the
Spanish censors themselves; most of them were my friends,
and I had always made it a rule not to dispute a censor’s
ruling on anything* but to endeavour to change my tele¬
gram to meet his views without sacrificing what I thought
was essential to the truth of my dispatch. Sometimes this
was impossible, and then I withdrew my message alto¬
gether. They were not the principal culprits. It was the
Central Press Office which issued such strange rulings at
such strange times, and gave them to some censors’ offices
and forgot to give them to others. It was also the fault
of the Central Press Office that a proper censorship of
newspaper telegrams having been admitted, Press tele¬
grams duly passed were yet subject to other military
censorships at relay stations. The result was that a
message censored, say at Talavera, might be censored again
—with all the inherent delays—at Badajoz. That was
the main reason for the fact that the Reds could always
claim victories while the true story of what had taken
place came twenty-four hours late, or a day after the fair.
What chance was there in such conditions of winning
world opinion? How can any one wonder with such
Press arrangements that, throughout Europe, everybody
thought that the Reds were winning the war easily at a
moment when really they were being defeated every day?

It is not for me to say who was responsible for such
faulty arrangements, but the errors of the organisation
were well known in Spain, and there were many who told

222

THE ATTACKS OH THE CORUNNA ROAD
me they regretted tliat General Franco had not raised
the whole department of Press and Propaganda to be
a Ministry as in Germany and Italy. Perhaps the easiest
time for the Press was at the outset, when we had at
Burgos for our guides and advisers Senor Pujol and
Count Melgar. Both of them were journalists and both
knew the exigencies of our profession.

Apart, there are amusing memories of censors. In pre¬
paring an interview with General Franco I had to submit
the text of important phrases he had pronounced so that
he could make sure his thought had not been betrayed.

I had to do this in French, as General Franco does
not read English. Once the text had been approved
I typed the whole matter out into English and then
presented it for the censor’s stamp. It came back to me
with one alteration. I had copied out the word “cata¬
strophe” in its correct spelling—“catastrophe.” The
obliging censor, with his perfect knowledge of English,
had crossed out the “e” and substituted a “y.” It was a
splendid piece of work. Another censor I can remember
was careful every time I mentioned a mechanised
column” to cross out the word “mechanised” and make
it read “mobile,” and every time I wrote “mobile” he put
his pen through it and wrote “mechanised.”

The early days of December were occupied by a ding-
dong battle in which the Nationalists, moving forward
from the Casa de Campo, stormed the heights round
Boadilla del Monte on the left and Pozuelo and Aravaca
on the right. This was the beginning of a fight which was
to last with brief intermissions until the end of January,
and was to cost many thousands of lives. The object of
the Nationalists was finally to hold the main Corunna
road from the point at Las Rosas where a branch road

223

8

THE SPANISH WAR

forks south for the Escorial, to the Iron Gates, due east,
where it enters Madrid. The Reds, using no fewer than
six brigades of international militia, fought desperately to
resist, and with counter-attacks which day after day
ranged over the same ground, managed to hold out for
nearly six weeks. It was becoming apparent that the Red
High Command—about this time General Miaja, talka¬
tive and boastful yet able, had come to the fore with his
two Russian advisers, Generals Goris and Koltzov, and
his chief of staff, well-named Colonel Rojo—had taken
the discipline and training of this militia well in hand.
The improvement in the military qualities of the Reds
could be seen week after week.

The first attack had to be the reduction of Humera.
This was a small village in the Casa de Campo, about three
miles south of Aravaca and the main road. From my
observation post in the Casa de Campo, I could not see
the village itself, but only the sanatorium, a cluster of
small red-brick buildings in a little grove of trees. The
Red lines ran about half-way between where I was and
the observatory, and it was possible, with the naked eye,
to see the Red militia moving about, cooking their
dinner in the shade of the trees, and even with glasses to
see from time to time the arrival of a Red staff car on the
road from Pozuelo. Sometimes nobody exchanged a shot
for days, and sometimes bullets were whistling by every
other minute. When the offensive began, everything was
changed. It started on a small scale which, militarily
speaking, was wrong. Two columns of Legionaries and
Moors, without much backing in artillery and tanks,
captured Humera sanatorium and, moving forward
cautiously over very difficult country consisting of a series
of entrenched slopes and groves of dark scrub oak and

224

THE ATTACKS ON THE CORUNNA ROAD

fields of silvery olive trees, reached and captured the
village of Humera and farther on even the villas round
the railway station of Poznelo. The heads of the columns
had been deflected from Aravaea, straight ahead of them,
by the force of that position, the approaches to which
were beaten by the Reds from three different directions.
This side-slipping was a fatal error, as it left the whole
Nationalist line once more much in the air. It was so
evident that orders -were speedily given for the advance
guards to fall back along the railway line, abandoning the
villas of Poznelo—the village itself was some distance
farther west—and to concentrate in a semicircle north
and west of Hixmera.

The move w r as carried out at night and just in time.
Strong Red forces moving from Boadila del Monte, still
a Red concentration point, and others coming from
Madrid itself, wrere planning an attack for dawn.. It
started with great fury, led on the west, that is to say
round Poznelo station, by no fewer than sixteen Russian
tanks. There was a considerable artillery preparation, but
it was obvious that the foreign officers commanding the
units of the International Brigade taking part were
worried w 7 hen they found they had “re-taken** Poznelo
station after the exchange of only a few rifle shots. There
was some delay, and then the attack pushed on due east to
the hollow ground immediately in front of Humera
village. It was then about seven in the morning, and the
Red attack from Madrid on the right flank of the National¬
ists was developing slowly. It was obvious that this was
either a diversion or a weak attack, and Colonel Yague, in
command, turned all his attention to meet the much
more formidable menace rolling up from Boadilla
through the ploughed fields and fruit gardens of Poznelo.

225

THE SPANISH WAR

The sixteen huge tanks lurched forward slowly, each
followed by its small packet of Red infantry. A second
and a third line of infantry, deployed in line and strongly
armed with machine-guns and automatic rifles, followed.

The Reds reached the lowest point of the grassy de¬
pression—planted in irregular lines with gnarled and
twisted olive trees, the youngest certainly a hundred
years old, while the veterans may have been there when a
French Philippe came to rule over Spain—without much
difficulty, and then started to climb to where they knew
the Nationalist lines of resistance must be on the heights.
The whole thing so far had been so uncannily quiet, so
absurdly easy that the Reds must have been getting more
and more uncomfortable. They had only lost one tank
so far, one hit by what must have been a chance shell
while skirting a Red trench in Pozuelo. While the tanks
were climbing, however, the Red infantry units were
moving forward much more slowly. There was welcome
shelter behind the great twisted roots of the olive trees,
and imperceptibly the bullets from machine-guns they
could not see were playing around them, kicking up the
dust at one moment and clipping leaves from the olive
trees overhead at another. The fire became more and
more intense, and the Red attacking line dwindled as men
dropped in the shallow ditches dug round so many of the
trees and began to open fire on the hostile crest, dully
outlined against the grey southern sky in front of them.

I had a complete story of the attack from a Nationalist
artillery observation officer who was in the trenches with
a periscope in front of him and a telephone attachment
jammed to his ear. “I could see in the dim light about
a thousand yards away the ugly forms of the tanks moving
between the trees,” he told me. “They were coming

226

THE ATTACKS ON THE CORUNNA ROAD

slowly forward but were bad targets because the light was
so poor. Anyhow, my orders were to wait for the infantry
and to leave the tanks to their special foes, the anti-tank
squads and the anti-tank gnus. I watched closely for the
first wave of Red infantry which should have been behind
the tanks, but could see nothing. The tanks came forward
until only about two hundred yards distant, when their
quick-firing field-guns and their machine-guns hurst into
action. The first were particularly unpleasant as, fired
with high muzzle velocity, they exploded almost before
one could hear the whizz of their arrival, and they
followed one another with lightning rapidity. Strangely
enough, most of the Red tank machine-guns were firing
too high, and it appeared that they were misled by the
mist and had taken the crest to be fully one hundred
yards farther distant than it was.

“At least a minute passed, with nothing happening
except that the camouflaged Hues of the enemy tanks
were growing rapidly in size and detail, and I felt that in
a moment they would be all over us. Then the fire of our
two anti-tank guns began, while on both flanks I could
see flashes of flame followed by dense clouds of smoke
showing where our petrol canister throwers were at work.
The machine-gun fire had by that time become a shrill
though staccato uproar, and both my batteries were firing
as fast as they could into the invisible hollow beneath me.
Suddenly a roar of flames went up from two tanks in the
centre. They had been hit by shells and set on fire. The
other grey, brown, and red monsters shthered forward a
few yards and then with a crash of gears began to turn.
They had first appeared about fifteen in number; two
were burning on the crest some fifty yards from us, two
others were moving hesitatingly backwards and forwards,

227

THE SPANISH WAR

somewhat like gigantic stag beetles which have been
turned on their backs, and were obviously in distress.
Eleven of them turned completely round and were crash¬
ing downhill at full speed through the brushwood, some¬
times raised on one ungainly caterpillar as they climbed
over an obstacle, sometimes sliding sideways as the treads
ceased to catch on the turf and the whole monster
appeared for a second to be out of control. Small shells
were bursting all round them, sending up little fountains
of turf and leaves while the rattle of bullets on their steel
“carapace” was as insistent as the sound of rain on a motor¬
car wind-screen. There were sparks and flashes now and
then as the bullets were deflected—crumpled little
missiles of metal, infinitely dangerous then for any human
flesh they met, as they caterwauled their incalculable
course through the air.

“Where was the Red infantry? My two battery com¬
manders asked me what I had seen, and I told them that
the tanks were gone, but that I had not caught sight of a
single Red militiaman. Others, however, did. As soon
as the Red tanks had disappeared, the Nationalist tanks
came out of the little wood in which they had taken cover.
Useless for them, slight and delicate things, to be about,
when large unwieldy masses of steel, carrying guns which
threw shells, were in sight. The sign of the flight of the
mastodons was that for the arrival of the whippets.
Their machine-guns already chattering, uneasily, they
rushed at full speed to the edge of the crest, and there,
sheltering half hidden behind trees and brushwood, they
began to pour the weight of their fire down into the
hollow. There were eight tanks, which meant sixteen
machine-guns, a number quickly increased as a machine-
gun company rushed forward at the double. Its crews,

228

THE ATTACKS ON THE CORUNNA ROAD

sweating and swearing, were down on their faces in a
minute and the work began. Machine-guns were in shell
holes or ditches, tripods were fixed, guns screwed into
place, sights swung into position with nervous hands;
chargers bit their way into their grooves, and as the
gunners 5 fingers took the pressure of the triggers the
whole line sprang into a whirlwind of bullets screaming
their way down into the confused ranks of the Reds.

“What had happened was that the second and third
enemy lines had reached the safety of the dead ground,
safety from bullets if not from shells, while the officers of
the first line, furious to find their men had not followed
the tank wave, were endeavouring to re-form them. At
that moment the tanks began crashing back down the hill,
and immediately afterwards there came the pitiless hail of
machine-gun bullets fired at a maximum of eight to nine
hundred yards. It was more than flesh and blood could
stand. The tanks, not to be halted in their course by any
objurgation, began to climb the reverse slope. They were
on their way home and were not waiting for anybody.
The Red infantry started to follow, many units in dis¬
order, others obeying the orders of their officers, who saw
no use in remaining in the hollow, unprotected, to be
massacred. The first- units bunched up and ran away as
a mob and suffered terrible losses. The second, deployed
according to the orders given them, as-if they were attack¬
ing and not retreating, and., so lost naturally many fewer. 55

When the fight was over, and at nightfall when the
enemy sharpshooters had been silenced, it was possible to
make a search of the grassy slopes in front of Humera and
towards the Pozuelo road. The bodies of the Reds were
found, in serried ranis where they had been assembled, and
in; thin lines where, they had climbed the hill in full flight,

229 ■

THE SPANISH WAR

but followed yard by yard by thirty-two fast machine-
guns traversing every avenue of retreat. It was a costly
lesson for the Reds, but it had not brought the National¬
ists any nearer their ultimate objectives.

These Red counter-attacks, some delivered in Russian
style at dead of night, continued for weeks, but without
the situation changing very much one way or the other.
The Nationalist High Command then determined to
make an attack on Boadilla del Monte itself. This took
place in the second week of December, and for what was
a limited and local engagement it was conducted with
great strength. Five columns of Legionaries and Regu-
lares took part in the action. The attack was made on
three sides after diligent artillery preparation. It took,
however, five days 5 continuous fighting before the Reds
were driven out of the large village of Boadilla del Monte
and forced to retire on Pozuelo and Majadahonda. I
visited the scene of the battle twenty-four hours after¬
wards. I found that four, and in some cases seven lines of
trenches, properly traversed and wired, seamed the hills
surrounding the village. The slaughter was very great.
All the Nationalist dead by then had been removed and
buried, but the Reds were lying in great numbers all over
the place. In many cases they had held their ground
despite shelling and machine-gunning, and the trenches
were only captured after hand-to-hand fighting, in which
hand grenades and the bayonet had been used. There
was no mistaking the nature of the wounds and the
position of the bodies. Hand-to-hand fighting entails
losses on either side, and it was certain that the Nationalist
attacking columns must have paid a heavy price for the
capture of such well-organised positions.

Once more I noticed that the Reds had used great

‘ 230

THE ATTACKS ON THE CORUNNA ROAD

quantities of dynamite grenades. These are clumsy
affairs which need ignition, have only a very small local
effect, and are often far more dangerous to those using
them than to their prospective mark. By this time the
Reds were receiving thousands of tons of munitions from
France, Russia, and Mexico, and it was therefore evident
that if the Reds went on using dynamite bombs it was
because they liked them. Probably in the word“dynamite”
there is some mysterious virtue which charms a Revolu¬
tionary’s ear.

Boadilla is one of the strongest-built villages I have seen
in the Madrid neighbourhood. It has immense farm-
buildings, with eight-foot-thick walls like forts, a huge
church with similar walls, and a great ducal palace of solid
grey stone, which would resist a bombardment with eight-
inch howitzers. The palace was frankly hideous, both
inside and out, and had been used as hospital, barracks,
and powder magazine by the Reds. When I went over
it, Nationalist artillery officers were sorting the cases of
grenades, bombs, and explosives, deciding what could be
kept and what had to be destroyed. The better part of
the ground floor of the palace, where were situated the
immense vaulted kitchens, had been turned into the
powder magazine; nevertheless one of the kitchen fires
was crackling, half with coal and half with wood, and an
immense dixie of stew was being cooked for the wounded
in the hospital beds upstairs. I saw the sparks fly as a
clumsy automatic bellows was used to make the fire draw.
I looked at the huge pile of black cases, not more than
twelve feet away, and wondered what would become of the
palace of the Dukes of Sueca were they all to explode.

The neglected gardens of the palace were laid out in
terraces with low walls and boxwood borders of formal

THE SPANISH WAR

design. The Reds had dug trenches behind the walls and
the boxwood, and had made their last stand there. Three
hundred of them, brave fellows who had scorned to run,
were there, still and bloodstained, lying in those stiff and
awkward attitudes which tell of sudden death. The eyes
were nearly always calm and sometimes slightly surprised.
Every man hopes to live, until Death is actually at his
shoulder.

Here again one could see that the Red international
brigades had been the main element of the defence. The
dead I examined were French, Czechs, and Russians. The
cartridges for their rifles and machine-guns were French
or Mexican; the shell-cases I picked up had been manu¬
factured in Russia.

The Nationalist advance was followed by the usual
reaction. Three days later the Reds carried out a series
of fierce counter-attacks. On one occasion the left flank
of their attack actually reached the Brunete road, and the
Red wireless triumphantly announced the capture of that
village. It was not true, but it was probably thought to
be encouraging to the Reds fighting on other fronts.

The capture of Boadilla was only the prelude to wider
planned operations. The Nationalists wished to free the
Casa de Campo from Reds and so relieve the troops in that
sector and in the University City from the terrible strain
of knowing every hour that the Reds were in the rear
of them, and that at any moment a successful attack
on them might sever their thin lines of communication.
No soldier likes having to fight continually looking round
behind him.

The next chapter in the plan of campaign was an attack
on the left wing directly in front of Brunete towards Las
Rozas, at the point of junction of the Escorial and

232

THE ATTACKS ON THE CORUNNA ROAD

Corunna roads. From, the Mils in front of Brunete 1
could see on the horizon the line of trees where the
Corunna road runs, and just twenty yards from the fork
the pink and wMte building of the Bar Anita, a fashion¬
able Madrilene road-house where, in more peaceful days,
1 had often driven in the evening with friends. The
country rolled in generous curves towards this crest on
which ran the great highway to the Atlantic coast at
Corunna, the road Sir John Moore took over a century
ago. Along the road were clusters of villas. Beyond,
after another dip, the scenery rose in terraces. There on
the left was the Escorial, nestling in an angle of the.
mountains; straight ahead and misty, in the distance was
Colmenar Viejo, important as a Red centre and as con¬
trolling the only road from the Escorial once the National¬
ists reached Las Rozas. Beyond, majestic, mantled in
snow, rose the peaks of the Guadarrama, ranging from
seven thousand to nine thousand feet.

In the immediate foreground there were ploughed fields
and the inevitable olive groves. The road led straight,
ahead and dipped out of sight to Villanueva de la Canada,
slightly on the left but in a hollow, so that only the tip of
its church spire could be seen, peeping out of a fold in the
ground. That was the first objective, and it was carried
within a few hours. The attack, having, secured its left
flank by holding the two Villanuevas—for that of Pardillo
still farther north was taken, during the afternoon— it
became necessary to change 'direction and to attack
almost, due east from this new line. The country is
divided by three small streams, but there are no villages
until one .reaches, first Majadahonda in the fields, and then
Las Rozas on the road. Here and there, however, are
strange square buildings called casidks . They have tMck

233 .

THE SPANISH WAR

walls, to withstand the heat of the summer sun, and were
used by Madrilenes for week-ends before the more
modem form of villa became fashionable. Each of them,
usually surrounded by its own olive grove and orchard,
could be converted by the Reds into a veritable block¬
house. The Reds had not omitted to do so. It took thus
two days to storm these five thousand yards of undulating
fields and to capture the four castellos which crowned the
slopes. The Reds had no time to counter-attack, but fell
back sullenly each day, after having fought desperately.
Each castello and its gardens had sheltered a battalion of
the International Brigade, and each of these battalions
had to be wiped out practically to a man before it fell.

It was six days after the opening of the offensive that I
was able to reach Majadahonda by car, and then on foot
progress as far as las Rozas. It was an awkward and deli¬
cate trip. We started out from Boadilla del Monte with
a staff car preceding us. I was warned not to follow too
closely and not to stop if there was any shelling, but to
dash straight on. I had not counted on the fact, however,
that we were not taking a road but merely a series of
country cart-tracks, and that the staff car was driven
with a total disrespect for tyres and springs which was
comprehensible when dealing merely with Army property,
or say a requisitioned car. Juan, my driver, did not share
this feeling, as he knew that he or his brother would have
to buy the new tyres and springs, and they would not be
furnished by a generous Army Ordnance Department.
The result was that we swung and bumped along the
rough track, sometimes on a high slope, sometimes almost
axle deep in water, at a much slower pace, and within
a few minutes had completely lost sight of our guide.
There were tracks crossing the one we were taking every

234

THE ATTACKS OS' THE CORUNNA ROAD

few hundred yards, and though at first we found boards
with arrows and the name Majadahonda, soon there were
no indications. On either side of the track, and once or
twice right in the middle, were shell holes. Trench lines,
crooked and deep-dug, seamed the slopes, and there were
bodies everywhere. We managed to steer a straight
course more by good luck than anything else, and after a
few final bumps we swayed down a bank on to the road,
and there was Majadahonda village five hundred yards in
front of us. We passed the control post, where we were
informed that the staff car had arrived a quarter of an
hour earlier and was waiting for us in front of the ayunta-
miento or town hall.

Majadahonda had not been much damaged in the
fighting. It was an ugly, straggling village with the usual
irregular market squares, now filled with camp kitchens,
and there in the shade a heavy artillery column ready to
pull out, its work accomplished. We were told that if we
liked we could take our cars as far as Las Rozas, but the
staff would prefer us to go on foot as they were obliged
to send lorries np with stores and did not want too much
attention called to the road, which was in full view of the
enemy at Torrelodones.

It was only a couple of thousand yards by a field track,
and we were soon on the main road. It seemed strange to
set foot on its broad asphalt surface, practically un¬
damaged by the war. To see the great signpost pointing
to the Escorial, 49 kilometres away, it looked quite easy
to go there, but we knew that not more than a kilometre
away the road was barricaded, and that Reds were in their
trenches ready to fight. The Corunna road brought
memories. Away there on the crest of the mountains, in
the Guadarrama pass, high in the snow, were the front

235

THE SPANISH WAR

lines of the Nationalists, their concrete shelters, and
machine-gun posts, ■which I had -visited but a few weeks
earlier.

It was with difficulty that I recognised the Bar Anita
when I reached it. There had been little damage bp shot
or shell; the plate-glass windows of its great frontage on
the main motor road had not b een smashed. But within,
the wreckage was indescribable. The Bar had, as I
knew, held a stock of prize French wines, champagnes and
liqueurs. The cellars had been looted until there was
nothing left bnt the bare frames of the iron bins. For a
hundred yards in every direction one could see the broken
fragments of champagne bottles of every known mark.
Everything was filthy; sc mudh so, that without orders,
the Moorish Regulares, who had taken over the sector,
had begun to sweep and to clean in preparation for their
officers, who were due to arrive shortly. It was not yet
possible to go along the road, however, for though the
enemy had been driven down into the hollows on its
north side they could snipe from the gradual rise about a
thousand yards away, and they still held Aravaca and
Pozuelo on the Madrid end.

The village of Las Rozas itself Is in a tiny depression in
the fork of the road going to the Escorial. It has a very
pretty church, much dilapidated by the Reds, who had
used it as a powder magazine and a dance hall, apparently,
alternately. Its last houses "were barricaded, and a brisk
fire was being kept up on the Red trenches, only distant
about three hundred yards outside the village. The
whole of this area as far as Brunet e has been the scene
of the latest Red drive. The offensive, originally planned
to relieve the pressure on Bilbao, was a formidable affair
backed by some 50,000 of the best Red troops; but it

236

THE ATTACKS ON THE CORUNNA ROAD

broke down because the 'Nationalists held the strong
point of Boadilla and Majadahonda.

On my way back to Talavera I picked up a Spanish
staff officer who told me an interesting tale illustrating the
fact that the division of families during the Civil War has
often given rise to tragic situations.. He described how,
but a few days back, negotiations of a semi-official charac¬
ter took place between the Reds and local Nationalist
commanders for the exchange of three Red families living
in Nationalist Spain in return for three Nationalist
families living in Red Spain. The process was to be quite
simple. A four-mile stretch of road near the village of
Miajadas, east of Merida and then in Red territory, was
to be neutralised, and at a given hour lorries carrying the
families from, either side were to be taken to the middle of
the strip for the exchange. The lorries were to be driven in
reverse to this appointed meeting-place from the moment
they reached the neutralised strip of' road. Thus they would
be able to drive off again with the minimum delay.

“Where the difficulty came / 5 my informant told me,
“was when Captain Luna, who acted as negotiator for the
Nationalists, informed the Red families of what had .been
settled. He first visited two families and told them they
were to be transferred to the territory south of the Tagus
where they would find other members of their familiesand
their male relatives, who were fighting in the ranis of the
Reds. This proposal, however, met with shouts and cries
of disapproval. Indignantly both families, men, women,
and children, refused to budge. The women, lying on
the ground, said; Won will have to drag us by main force,
for we will not get up and move an inch; we are. safe and
happy here, and. here we intend to remain . 5

“Captain Luna gave up the struggle, but put on a lorry

237

THE SPANISH WAR

the third family composed of fourteen persons without
informing them of their destination. When the lorry
however, reached the vicinity of Miajadas the patriarch
of this family, a man aged about eighty-five, realised what
was being done and, as the car stopped before turning so
as to proceed up the neutral strip in reverse, he got down
and bade his womenfolk to follow. They then all refused
to move.

“In despair Captain Luna drove in his car to the
appointed meeting-place and there met the Red captain
who had been arranging the exchanges on the other side.
He was particularly interested in the negotiations as he
was the son of the white-haired old man who was waiting
obstinately on the road two miles away. After having
explained the situation, Captain Luna said: ‘Come with
me yourself and try to persuade your father to accompany
you, as we are anxious to conclude our side of the bargain
as far as possible.’ The Red officer, refusing the per¬
mission to take two armed men with him as an escort
got into Captain Luna’s car, and a pathetic scene ens' ;d
when he met the members of his family. They still
refused to move, and the aged father said, ‘You have gone
your way, and you think you are right; otherwise I would
stand here and curse you for bringing ruin on your
country and shame on my white head. Begone, and
remember that none of us would ever dream of following
you to your camp of iniquity.’ The Red captain bowed
his head and, getting back into Captain Luna’s car, he
said to him, ‘You can bring your lorry with you. I will
hand over your people to you, for you have done your
best like a good fellow, and it is our fault, not yours, that
our reputation is such that honest people refuse to entrust
themselves to us.’”

238

THE ATTACKS ON THE CORUNNA ROAD

About this time, during a visit to Avila, I met an
interesting Italian. He was Signor Guido Caprotti da
Monza, the portrait painter. A tall, middle-aged ma n.,
with an expressive and humorous face, he was exceed¬
ingly good company and had a fund of anecdotes about
the art circles of Montparnasse and well-known figures
in the world of art and the stage. He had an immense
atelier in Madrid, where he not only painted, but also
held a sort of school of art like the painters of olden
times. In Avila he lived in a mediaeval palace which
he had modernised without spoiling its artistic cachet.
He kept practically open house, and we knew that when
we tired of the Spanish cooking we had only to drop
round to his house at the aperitive hour to be welcomed
and promptly invited to stay for dinner. Caprotti was
very fond of good food and good wine, and told us that
he often put his hand to the cooking himself and was
inordinately proud of a book of cooking which he had
published in French and Italian some years back, with
thirty original recipes.

“I came to Avila,” he told me, “quite by accident
eighteen years ago. There was a very heavy fall of snow
in the Guadarrama, and the railway line was blocked by
an immense drift at Robledo de Chavela, where Captain
Aguilera is taking us to-morrow. I had to spend the
night in Avila and so put up at the Hotel Ingles. The
next day I decided to have a good look round Avila and
I found I liked it. For three years I did not leave the
place except when I had an urgent appointment in
Madrid which I could not avoid. I made at least half
my sitters come to my studio here and be painted,
telling them it would do them good. And then I bought
this place as a permanent summer home, and now how

239

THE SPANISH WAR

glad I am, because it would Have been unpleasant for me,
an Italian, to have been obliged to remain in Madrid.”

About the same time I met the Duke of Montellano,
who had just managed to escape from Bilbao and had
joined the staff of Lieutenant-Colonel Castejon of
Spanish Legion fame. What he told me was of special
interest to myself, as he said: “I hid in Bilbao in the house
of an Englishman, whose name I cannot give for the
moment, as his property might suffer if the Reds knew
what he had done. My host and benefactor received the
Daily Mail , and it was by reading your dispatches that
I knew what was the real state of affairs, and was able
to keep up, not only my own courage, but also that of the
numerous other Spaniards of Nationalist views who were
also in hiding and to whom I was able to circulate the
good news that all was not lost.”

There was a lull in the fighting about Christmas time,
and most of us war correspondents felt bored and tired.
We did get together, however, for a dinner on New Year’s
Eve, to which we invited a number of prominent Spaniards
and for which the menu, simple but good, was entirely
prepared by ourselves. The dinner began at ten o’clock,
and we were still at table at two in the morning. Toasts
of all sorts were drunk at midnight, and in fact somebody
got up and put the hands of the clock back as there were
still more toasts to be drunk and they showed five minutes
past twelve. So we had three different midnights for
three different sets of healths to be drunk. All very foolish,
but a welcome diversion all the same.

I had the pleasure of making the Frenchmen who were
present all stand and drink to the health of the next
King of France. We English drank to the health of our own
King, followed by a silent toast to the Duke of Windsor.

240

THE ATTACKS ON THE CORUNNA ROAD'

The next important fighting began on January 8,
when General Orgaz, who now commanded the u Rein-
forced Madrid Division,” which really amounted to some¬
thing like an Army corps, pushed his line right forward to
the slopes of Partridge Hill, thus completing the capture
of the Corunna road and finally clearing the Casa de Campo
of Reds. This was of immense importance, as it gave the
Nationalists a broad base for communications with the
University City, and abolished the terrible danger that
one day the Nationalist garrison on the left bank of the
Manzanares might find itself cut off by a successful R^d
counter-attack in the Casa de Campo. But it did not go
quite as far as many of us had hoped. We had expected
that once Partridge Hill had been seized, the Nationalists
would continue their drive due north and hold the Pardo
Park as far north as Colmenar and east as Akobendas.
This would have effectively cut off all the Red garrisons
at the Escorial and in the Guadarrama. We were
merely map strategists and knew little of* the difficulties
of the ground, the number of Red fortified positions
which would have to be taken, and also whether General
Orgaz had sufficient troops. For what appeared through¬
out this “siege” of Madrid to be holding the Nationalists
back most was the shortage of trained men. The Legion¬
aries and the Moors were the only shock troops, and they
had never numbered more than about fifteen thousand
men. Their ranks had been decimated time after time,
but had always been filled up with recruits hurriedly
trained, but who—marvel of esfrit de c§rf §—always
seemed as good as their predecessors. These shock troops
were used in every offensive, but they could only cover
a limited front, and therefore those further strategic gains
which time after time would have been so valuable had to

.241

THE SPANISH WAR

be forgone for lack of troops to exploit them. Not only
was this true, but also once a local success had been gained
it was not possible to attack again speedily at the same
or at a different point; there was no possibility of that
continued rain of blows described by Foch as the most
effective of ah modern war methods. The tired troops
had to be rested, and it was not until they had been rested
and their ranks replenished that it was possible for a fresh
attack to be staged. This invariably gave the defeated
enemy time to recover, time to entrench himself, time to
bring up his reserves, and finally time to counter-attack.

General Franco was well aware of the deficiencies of
his army, and all these months he was working hard,
forging new weapons in the shape of new regiments of the
regular army, carefully trained in the rear and then
accustomed to war conditions gradually by stages in the
front line, and also fresh banderas of the famous Legion,
drawn in a number of cases from an orderly influx of
several thousands of foreign volunteers, mainly Italian.

It was the Legionaries, four banderas of them, who
captured Pozuelo, not only the railway station this time,
but the whole village, which had been terribly damaged
by Nationalist air attacks. Here again it was patent that
the International Brigade had been employed and had
worked hard, for there were line after line of deep-dug
trenches, with concrete dug-outs and well-devised pill¬
boxes for machine-guns. The Legionaries in four hours,
however, had swept through the heart of the Red
positions, and the Moors, advancing from Humera to
Aravaca, completed the day’s victory by holding the whole
of the Gorunna road to the point where it dips and crosses
the Manzanares to enter Madrid by the Iron Gate.

The Nationalists’ losses were again severe. The Red

242

THE ATTACKS ON THE CORUNNA ROAD

troops who held the positions both at Pozueio and at
Aravaca were not men to allow themselves to be driven
away easily and without putting up a stiff fight. Some of
the units at Pozueio were entirely French, with French
sergeants and French officers, and they fought desperately.
When I visited the battlefield three days later I found
them lying dead in rows in the trenches from which not
one man had fled. Hand-to-hand fighting with grenades
and bayonets had again been necessary, and in such warfare
the attacker cannot but suffer heavily himself.

The Red High Command must have been very seri¬
ously alarmed at this latest Nationalist success, for they
made a series of counter-attacks lasting continuously for
something like forty-eight hours. One of the fiercest
was conducted by three columns of Russians and was a
night attack. The Reds formed up near 2iarzuelo in the
Pardo Park and, without any artillery preparation, started
out at two in the morning on a pitch-black night to
endeavour to drive through by sheer weight of numbers
in close formation to Humera in the centre of the Casa
de Campo. It was found later that the orders were that
there was to be no deployment, no matter what were
the losses, until Humera had been reached, when a line
would be established with two protective flanks thrown
back to Aravaca, and where the Reds were to await day¬
light before continuing their advance. It sounds a des¬
perate plan, but the amazing thing was that it was touch
and go that it did not succeed.

The three columns, each composed of some two
thousand men, advanced with an interval of three hundred
yards between the advance guards, and so that this dis¬
tance be kept throughout the night attack the left files
of each column were every five minutes to fire lights of

243

THE SPANISH WAR

different colours so that there could be no doubt as to
the direction.

The tanks first brought down the Nationalist barrage of
artillery, but this was not strong enough to prevent both
tanks and infantry storming through with little loss. Then
when the Nationalist picket line opened fire the machine-
gun posts came into play and the Red columns began
to suffer severe losses. The machine-gunners were firing
blindly, but they were firing in accordance with a “range
table,” and so the ground across which the three dense
columns of Russian Reds were advancing was swept every
minute by a spray of bullets which each time took its
toll. The three columns came nearer; distance had not
been preserved. Despite the rockets and the lights, and
despite the Lucas lamp signals, the natural result of night
marching had become manifest. The columns were
diverging the one from the other, and the centre column
had swung round almost at right angles for a moment
and was marching straight towards the Manzanares. It
must have been, according to reports which I read many
days afterwards, when they had gone nearly three
thousand yards that an officer caught a momentary
glimpse of the stars through the clouds and then cor¬
rected the direction of this column. The left-flank
column had also of necessity modified its line of march,
though only when the sergeants of the centre column
were almost on them and, pushing and swearing, ordering
them to keep their distance of three hundred yards.

It was this left column which first ran into serious
difficulties. It had been deflected so far to the east that
its head ran up against the Nationalist lines at Aravaca.
The officer in charge, at that very moment, discovered
the error of march, and was giving orders to correct it so

244

THE ATTACKS OH THE CORUNNA.. ROAD

as to bring his men back into alignment with, the centre
and move southwards towards Hnmera.

The Nationalist lines began to blaze with flame as
every machine-gun opened fire, while Very light after
Very light went up. The Reds should have deployed
and withdrawn. It was their only hope, but nobody gave
orders, and still in column of march they swung off across
the fields to rally the centre. Men stumbled in the ruts
of the stubble fields, men fell hit by bullets, men lay down
to get out of the terrible fire which was raking the line
of march. It is estimated that this column alone lost
more than half its effectives in this marching and counter"
marching before any real fighting took place.

Finally with the alarm rockets going up from all over
the Nationalist lines, the heads of the three columns
more or less in position made their desperate dash for tbs
centre of the Nationalist trenches at Humera. Colonel
Yague’s men had identified the line of progress of the
tanks, and at three in the morning scouts came in and
reported the march of the three columns. The Nation"
alist officer in charge of the front line immediately
withdrew his machine-guns to a flank and slightly to the
rear, and prepared to counter-attack with hand grenades
the moment the Reds set foot in his trenches.

Still being cut into by machine-gun bullets, the columns
rushed forward, buglers who had been brought out for
this night attack actually sounding the charge. The heads
of the left and centre column were completely shot away*
not a single man of the leading companies reaching th^
Nationalists 5 front line owing to the terrible fire from the
machine-gun on the flank. The right column, which all
through had been less tried, was moving up a small
depression and did not get the full force of the fire. It

2 45

THE SPANISH WAR

reached the Nationalist trenches, cut right through, and
stormed on towards the second line where, according to
orders, the men started to deploy.

I had the rest of the story from a Legion officer of
Lieutenant-Colonel Castejon’s staff who came down with
a slight wound after the battle. “We had moved up
two support companies from the rear, he told me, and
we were just approaching our line when in the dark we
could see a large body of men coming towards us at the
double and opening out. We dashed straight at them.

I used my revolver, but there was little or no firing as
we were at too close a range and, therefore, bayonet or
rifle butt was used. Some Moors who came up, I don’t
know where from, dropped their rifles and used their
daggers. It was a pretty shambles while it lasted. I
found myself using my pistol as a club, and then suddenly
everything seemed to clear up; the Reds were running.
We went after them at the double, but no farther than
our front line trenches, because our machine-gun officers,
who were working like Trojans, wanted to get their bar¬
rages at work again on the retreating enemy.’

I went over the field of battle two days later and traced
the advance of the three columns by the regular lines of
dead. Between the Nationalists’ first and second lines
the Red dead were in heaps, ten or twelve at the same
point, and then another dozen, and so on for-over one
hundred and fifty yards. The Reds must have lost some¬
thing like 1,500 dead in that one night attack alone.

It was a bright, sunny day when I went up to visit
Pozuelo and Aravaca, and the Reds were still excessively
active. They had ceased their counter-attacks but were
keeping up incessant shelling and machine-gun barrages.
They had made a strong-point at a large villa, whose

246

THE ATTACKS ON THE CORUNNA ROAD

name in letters of gold, Atlaya, could still be seen, though,
riddled with bullets, hanging askew on the great iron
gateway. Their trenches ran right into the villa garden,
and the communicator going back down the hill to
Pozuelo was cut right through the living-rooms of the
villa. Next to the garden gate was a Russian tank. It
had evidently been caught in an awkward spot where it
had little room to turn, and it was being backed along the
garden wall when it met its fate.

The Nationalist artillery had wrought havoc with the
Villa Atlaya, and with half its roof off and huge shell holes
through walls, one had to step cautiously when one entered
for fear of bringing down crazy beams and masonry on
one’s head. Dishes and dixies of food stood in one corner,
showing how the Reds had used the place til the last
minute. On the billiard-table a couple of cues were lying,
and the score was written in chalk on a slate, but the balls
had disappeared. There was some very fine furniture,
most of it irreparably damaged. In one room, however, I
saw a magnificent Venetian mirror without a single crack.
It was a large affair and must have been worth at least three
hundred guineas. By now most likely more of the roof
has falen in, and the chances of the owners finding the
mirror intact when they come back to their house are
very smal.

The village of Pozuelo itself was more destroyed than
any other place I have visited during the Civil War,
Enormous craters showed where Nationalist air bombs
had hit, and even the thick-walled, stoutly built Spanish
houses had collapsed. In the church, showing an immense
hole through the roof of the apse, there was an amazing
collection of furniture. Part of the nave had been used
as a dancing room, and apparently cabaret turns were also

247

THE SPANISH WAR

given, as one could guess from a programme chalked in
lewd Spanish on the wall. The confessional boxes had
been turned into dressing-room accommodation with
anti-conception devices for the women, and generally
speaking the Reds, with their usual sadism, had endeav¬
oured to do everything foul which they thought might
desecrate the church more.

In one corner was a magnificent Portuguese tester bed
with twisted columns, and, standing next to it, a grand¬
father clock in a beautiful painted box. The woodwork
and painting were Spanish, but the clock itself was by one
John Davis of London. I would have liked to take it
with me as it seemed doubtful that its owner, if alive,
would ever find it again. But I did not care to appear to
be a looter, and the clock was not an object which could
be easily transported.

Past the railway station, the scene of so much unsuccess¬
ful fighting weeks earlier, we had to leave our cars when
we got to the entrance of Aravaca. Four-inch and six-
inch shells were falling on either side of the road pretty
frequently, and it would have been unwise to go any
farther by car. Aravaca we found in a very good state
of repair, and after visiting the Sector Commander we
were authorised at our own risks and perils to go up the
main street, cross the waste ground looking somewhat
like a village green, and on to Partridge Hill to find once
more our familiar Corunna road. There was the Halcyon
road house on Partridge Hill, a famous meeting-place for
the Red leaders of Madrid, and I was very anxious to have
a good look at it.

But I was to find that Aravaca was not a healthy place
for a stroll. We went across the “village green” while a
perfect chatter of machine-gun bullets went on overhead.

248

THE ATTACKS ON THE CORUNNA ROAD

I asked what was the distance of the Red machine-
gun posts, and when told fifteen hundred yards I tried to
work out trajectories and came to the conclusion that
the bullets would be very effective and would also have
the additional disadvantage of not hitting one horizon¬
tally but vertically, thus making a much more unpleasant
wound. It would have been infra dig. to hurry, especi¬
ally as the Legion officer accompanying us, a pleasant
young fellow, did not seem to care anything about it and
even stopped at one most unpleasant spot to ask for a
light. When finally we reached the comparative shelter
of the line of villas and their gardens abutting on the main
road, I could see the bullets chipping the mortar and
bricks and kicking up little spurts of dust on the road.

Straight in front of us were two Russian tanks, put
out of action by direct hits from anti-tank guns, and
farther along the road another. The Reds apparently
did not like anybody approaching these, for they were the
object of a special barrage from machine-guns, and even
the Legion officer did not suggest that we should pay
them a visit.

I did want to get to the road-house, however, and we
slipped through the gardens at the back, engineers having
thoughtfully cut passages through the walls, until we were
about three hundred yards from the crest of the road
where we could see it standing with its pergolas, its
imitation marble pillars and its ice-cake decorations. My
friend d’Hospital and myself looked at the road and
listened to the hum of the bullets and decided that it
was not worth the risk. Three of our companions, braver
possibly, or perhaps less versed in the dangers of machine-
gun fire, said they would run for it. They did, and had
not gone fifty yards before they were lying flat in a wet

2 49

THE SPANISH WAR

ditch. It took them half an hour to turn round and
wriggle back, and the moment one of them raised his head
a few inches or so it was to hear the crackle of the machine-
gun bullets and to see earth being raised at a dozen
different points.

We two meanwhile had entered the first villa we saw
to find an artillery mess installed. We were offered
luncheon, which we refused, but it was good to sit
round a big log fire, and the coffee which was served was
very agreeable. We were shown bullet holes through the
shutters in every direction, and told that only that
morning two officers sitting at breakfast had been
wounded. Some sandbags had since been put up out¬
side the window.

'‘Would you like some French brandy?” the battery
major asked us, and we readily accepted. “It comes from
the Halcyon road-house,” he went on, and we realised
that others had been able to get there. But the major
added that it was only at night that anybody could go
there along the road, though it was possible to make a
detour by a trench in the fields.

Half an hour later I met an old man who told me that
he was waiting for dusk to take the road back to his house
on Partridge Hill. “I have been very well treated,” he
said; “my wife and I have our little cottage there, next to
the road-house, where I used to be second chef. We did
not want to leave. We cooked the dinners for the Reds as
long as they were there.” And he shrugged his shoulders,
adding. “They did not pay well, but we had to live. Now
there is nothing left for us to do, but my wife and I are
still staying there, and as soon as the fighting moves along
we will get busy again with our pots and pans, and you
won’t find any better cooking in Spain.”

250

THE ATTACKS OH THE CORUNNA ROAD

In Aravaca I was shown a terrible little black book which
belonged to the chief Red executioner in that region.
He had only put his Christian name Garcia in the fly¬
leaf; all the rest of the pages were filled with lists and
descriptions of the people he had shot. It was obvious
he was a man with a methodical mind, and preferred when¬
ever possible to have the names of the people he was
shooting. For the first entries, among them three women,
he had the names of nearly all. Then there came page
after page in which there was only a rough description
such as: “Shot this morning, September 15. One old
man, white hair, slight moustache, wearing grey jacket,
blue shirt, black trousers.” It was very noticeable that
the man had made inquiries, for superimposed on such
anonymous details might be scrawled, obviously at a later
date, a name: “Pedro Jimenez.” But there was the little
black book of Aravaca, and there was the terrible tale of
Red murders for that tiny village alone. In twenty days
fifty-six men and women had been shot in Aravaca.
Official information from Madrid was that before the end
of 1936 over 50,000 people had been shot in Madrid by
the Reds. Of this number there were over 5,000 women
and children. The figures registered at the British
Embassy at this moment, I was told, numbered well
over 25,000, and it was then well known that the British
Embassy officials had not been able to register more than
about one in two murders carried out by the Reds.

It must be remembered that while the Red courts
martial and people’s courts were working at top speed
they did not manage to condemn more than about thirty
per cent of the people who were actually shot. All the rest
of the executions were carried out entirely illegally, even
accepting Red theories of government. It is remarkable

251

THE SPANISH WAR

that during all these months of war there was no place
in Spain where peace, law, and order were maintained
save in Nationalist territory. While m Red Spam there
were murders, bomb-throwing, arson, and other crimes
almost without number, the criminal calendar of ordinary
offences in Nationalist Spain fell to practically zero.
The reason was that all the professional criminals had
already chosen the other side-some of them even to be
Ministers of the Valencia Government—and had gone
over to their soul-mates, the Communists. And so
through Navarre, Galicia and Castile the normal life of
the country went on almost without interruption. For
perhaps the first time since the Republic had usurped
power, it was possible for foreigners to wander freely at
night through the streets of Spanish provincial towns
without danger of meeting with an unfortunate accident.
During the months I have travelled from north to south
of Nationalist Spain I have never found any need to lock
my valises or to keep my hotel room door closed. The
normal Spaniard is honest, and the abnormal Spaniards
were all on the side of the Reds. In February and March
I had the good fortune to have with me, pleasantest
of colleagues and travelling companions, Mr. Randolph S.
Churchill. He told me how, returning from Talavera
to Avila over the Sierra de Gredos, his car broke down.
He was then only forty miles from Avila, so, telling the
chauffeur to wait until he sent a breakdown car, he
promptly “jumped” a lorry. ^

“When I arrived at Avila cross-roads, lie said, I had
to get down, as the lorry was going straight on to Sala¬
manca. I offered the man two dour os [roughly five
shillings]. But he politely and quite decisively refused to
accept it, saying he had been only too glad to render a

.■ 2 5 2 ■

THE ATTACKS ON THE CORUNNA ROAD

service.” That was how I found nearly all Spaniards.
They were cautious and reserved, but they did not care
anything for money. It hardly existed so far as they were
concerned.

In Avila there was a bright and cheerful society,
amazingly simple in their ways and manners. There were
a number of young girls, but even war-time excitement
did not make them, as the French say, “throw then-
bonnets over the windmills.” Half a dozen of the pretti¬
est and brightest were always to be seen together. It was
taken for granted that they were looking for husbands, and
they were laughingly described as “the chaser squadron.”

It has been said that a Spanish woman, after marriage,
is relegated to the home and that her only tasks then are
going to church, bringing children into the world, and
looking after them. It is certain that the Spanish woman
does go to church a lot, and has many children, but she
certainly does not appear to think that she is “relegated”
anywhere. She is bright, she laughs most of the time,
usually displaying pretty white teeth, and she appears to
take good care that her husband pays her the necessary

attention and does not court anybody else too long. The

Spaniard is not, perhaps, as polite to women as we or the
French are, but he is fully occupied in seeing they have a
good time. On the other hand, he equally insists on the
family life being kept up, and when a Spaniard and his
wife go away somewhere it is always with all the children
and two or three nurses and maids. The old romantic
idea of Spanish women sitting with fan in hand behind an
iron-barred window must be dismissed as belonging to a
century long past. The Spanish girls would be the first

to laugh at it. .

The month of January had come to an end, and, at er

253

THE SPANISH WAR

a brief visit to tbe Riviera on important business, I re¬
turned to Spain for the further operations round Madrid
in the Jarama sector and on the Guadalajara road. Mr.
W. F. Hartin, fresh from his experiences in Abyssinia,
had come out to Spain to represent the Daily Mail in
the meantime, and he saw much of the fighting at the
beginning of the year. When I returned I was accom¬
panied by Mr. Randolph S. Churchill, who was extremely
keen on making an early acquaintance with war con¬
ditions. Unfortunately, there was in reality little chance
at this moment of going far forward on any active front.
Diplomatic necessity caused a veil to be drawn over
all points where any foreign volunteers, and especially
Italians, might be found, and so the General Staff did
not willingly countenance journalistic expeditions to the
front lines.

We were able, however, to go once or twice to the
front lines in the Aravaca district and to Robledo de
Chavela. A few bullets whistled overhead from time
to time, and when I told Randolph Churchill, he was sur¬
prised and not a little disappointed. I never heard
them,” he said, and was visibly annoyed to learn that
he had been under fire for the first time in his life and
had been entirely ignorant of the fact. Later he was
able both to see and hear the Russian 4.7-inch shells
bursting in sufficient proximity to be quite well aware
of the fact.

Randolph Churchill was extremely anxious to ascertain
the treatment accorded to ordinary rank-and-file Red
prisoners. He repeated a statement of his father s that
grass may grow on battlefields but not on scaffolds, and
was much gratified when he was able after some persis¬
tence to send an important exclusive announcement to

254

THE ATTACKS ON THE CORUNNA ROAD
England of the humanitarian policy decided upon by
General Franco in this respect.

Despite the fact that he spoke his mind with unusual
frankness, Churchill was a great favourite not only with
his colleagues of the Press of all nationalities but also
with the Spaniards, who much admired the tawny spade
beard he began to grow on entering Spain.

While I was absent from Spain Malaga had fallen after
a whirlwind offensive which had taken the Reds entirely
by surprise. Spanish Legion units composed of Italian
volunteers, admirably equipped with the latest mechanised
models, each unit having its own tanks, accompanying
artillery, air squadrons and ample transport, had taken
an effective though not predominant share in the cam¬
paign. The advent of these new units to the Foreign
Legion undoubtedly scared the Reds and made them more
willing to listen to the objurgations of General Miaja,
the only real soldier they had. He insisted that the
International Brigade be drawn from the line whenever
possible and sent back, not to Madrid, where discipline
was ineffective, but to places like Tarancon, Sacedon and
Chinchon, well east of the capital, for training and re¬
organisation. It was then that he began to mould the
new Red army, which thought more of fighting than of
politics, which no longer elected its officers but merely
obeyed them, and which by February was beginning to
be quite a fair fighting instrument. ... -

The first time the remodelled Red militia came into
effective battle was on the Jarama river. General Varela
planned this action as an attack first due east and then
north-east, once the Jarama river had been crossed. He
was given ample troops, Legion and Moorish units,
and also for the first time a considerable force of artillery.

255

9 .

THE SPANISH WAR

As lie had to cross a river in the face of a strongly en¬
trenched enemy it was obviously necessary to have plenty
of guns to prepare the passage.

The front of attack was from Villaverde, the Cerro de
los Angeles, by Pinto south to Sesena, and its first objec¬
tive was Vaciamadrid, a little village just fifteen miles
out of the capital on the main Madrid-Valencia road.
This broad road had been used almost exclusively for
revictualling Madrid. The great proportion of food and
munitions brought by rail from Valencia as far as emer¬
gency railheads, like Alcazar de San Juan, was then trans¬
ported by lorry to the army camps and to the capital
along this road and the Chinchon side road which joins
it close to Vaciamadrid. If these roads were to be cut,
it meant that all traffic would have to be diverted to the
eastern Cuenca road, making enormous and costly
detours, while stores at existing railheads would be use¬
less. There was an even graver danger. This General
Miaja had promptly realised and already partly guarded
against. It was the danger that a Nationalist offensive,
driving north-east and reaching the neighbourhood of
Alcala de Henares, might force a great number of the
international battalions back into Madrid. There he
knew that without supplies, no matter how desperately
they might fight, their fate would be sealed in a week or so.

The moment the Nationalist attack began Miaja
therefore prudently based the troops defending his left
flank —that is to say between Aranjuez and Ciempo-
zudos—on Chinchon as advanced headquarters and
Tarancon as railhead and reserve base. His centre he
based on Alcala de Henares and Pastrana, while only those
few units defending Vallecas (a suburb of the capital)
were cantooned in Madrid.

256

THE ATTACKS ON THE CORUNNA ROAD

The moment the attack was fully developed and it
appeared certain that no other offensive was due to take
place elsewhere. General Miaja brought up all his re¬
modelled divisions to the Jarama front and before the
fighting died down he had something like 40,000 men
strung out along the line. General Varela had for his
part not more than 15,000 front-line troops. Once again
the Nationalists were going into battle somewhat prema¬
turely and without sufficient effectives if they really had
ambitious projects. If they only wished to cut the
Valencia road and pave the way for future action, then
they were justified and they succeeded.

The first and most bitter fighting took place on the
right flank along the railway embankment at Ciempo-
zuelos. The Reds there lost ground early, but coming
back in the afternoon in a surprise counter-attack fought
extremely well and, before they were finally driven off,
lost hundreds of dead to the Nationalist machine-gun
fire. In the centre, progress through three days of
fighting was more rapid. The Nationalists quickly seized
Vaciamadrid, effectively cutting the Valencia and Chin-
chon roads, and, having crossed the Jarama near St.
Mar tin de la Vega, pushed forward to Perales and the
immediate outskirts of Arganda.

The crossing of the Jarama was a brilliant bit of work
carried out with great dash by two banderas of Spanish
Legionaries and by four squadrons of Moorish cavalry.
The latter rode their horses across the river, deployed in
line despite heavy machine-gun fire, and, taking shelter
in a ravine on the other side, dismounted and pushed to
the crests. Here they established a line of machine-gun
posts which held back enemy counter-attacks until the
engineers and the Legionaries had built a pontoon bridge

257

THE SPANISH WAR

to carry tanks and artillery. The Reds were entirely taken
by surprise. They had not dreamt that the passage of
the Jarama could be forced so easily and so speedily.

When all this had been done and the primary objec¬
tives of the push (the cutting of the Valencia and Chinchon
roads) had been accomplished, a change came over th
fighting. Miaja had by then brought the majority of
his foreign and remodelled units into the line. General
Varela’s front had become fan-shaped, and was therefore
half as long again as when he started the offensive; too
drawn out for his depleted forces. To carry on the
offensive he would have needed ten fresh battalions, and
they were not yet available. Miaja profited from his
superiority to launch a series of counter-attacks during
the following week, but these were productive of little,
as the Nationalists, carefully entrenched and in good
positions, were able to hold out without losing more than
a few yards of trench. Stalemate continued. All this
time, and even as the last shots of the Jarama fights were
being fired, there was talk of a great new offensive being
planned. It is possible there was too much talk, though
it is difficult to see how during a civil war it can ever
be possible to conceal completely the plans for a big
offensive.

Three sectors were mentioned: the Guadalajara road,
the Pardo Park and University City, and the Jarama.
Everybody plumped for the Guadalajara sector, saying
that the other two points could only be the scenes of
small diversions. They were right, for actually the
Nationalist command was planning an extremely am¬
bitious attack down the main Aragon road, directed
towards Guadalajara. A tentative date fixed for the
attack was towards the end of February. The attack,

258

THE ATTACKS ON THE CORUNNA ROAD

to. be carried out by a number of entirely .motorised
columns, was to be pushed forward at the greatest speed
so as.to prevent General Mia]a, who had the advantage
of fighting on interior lines, from having the time to bring
all his reserves into play. It was hoped that on the third

SKETCH MAP ILLUSTRATING THE ATTACK ON MADRID,
MARCH I937

day of the attack one at least of the columns would have
reached the Cuenca road, Guadalajara would have fallen,

and the Nationalist advance guards would be pushing
forward as fast as their scouting tanks could go on the
road to Alcala de Henares. That would have meant
the fall of Madrid. Miaja would have been driven back
east. Despite the fact that he could be counted on to
deliver furious blows in counter-attack, it was estimated
that he would be unable to break the encircling ring of

259

THE SPANISH WAR

troops and that within a week the red and gold banner
would once more be floating over Madrid.

How far these prophecies erred on the side of optimism
it will be my task now to unravel. Before going into
detail all that is necessary is to say that the offensive met
with a distinct set-back due to atmospheric conditions
and human failure in probably equal parts.

The first thing that went wrong with the offensive
was that it was delayed too long and that there was divided
leadership. Undoubtedly, the whole attack was supposed
to be under the command of General Moscardo, himself
under the immediate supervision of the wise and cautious
General Mola. Actually, owing to the fact that the strong
and well-equipped foreign, mainly Italian, units, newly
incorporated in the Spanish Legion, were to take part for
the first time in a major offensive, the military councils
were divided. This was negligible when things were
going well, but was to prove a considerable drawback the
moment there was a hitch, and finally necessitated all
the authority of the presence of both Generals Franco and
Mola on the scene of battle to impose a unified command
and to secure implicit obedience to orders. The delay
was possibly inevitable. The weather at the end of
February was none too good, and this made the prepara¬
tion of the dumps and all technical work which had to
precede the offensive, which at the outset at least went
through hilly country, difficult and slow.

Finally, when things were proceeding a little faster,
a certain amount of transport and some fresh units
had to be diverted north to Oviedo, where the Reds
were making a desperate onslaught, obviously with the
very object of creating a diversion. Belarmino Tomas,
who commanded the offensive against Oviedo for the

260

THE ATTACKS ON THE CORUNNA ROAD

Bilbao Reds, was given the pick of the Red militia there,
all the foreign units which had been trained at Bilbao,
and all that was left of the notorious corps of Asturian
miners and dinamiteros. All told he had 35,000 men,
and was well equipped, being furnished with fifty Russian
tanks, two hundred field-guns, and over a thousand
machine-guns. With this force he attacked General
Arganda in command at Oviedo. Arganda had but eight
thousand Nationalists, mainly second-line troops, with
him. But Nationalist second-line troops, though possibly
not good in the offensive, are excellent troops in defence,
and so Belarmino Tomas found to his cost.

The position at Oviedo is (and has been ever since the
city was relieved in October) very peculiar. The National¬
ists marched into Oviedo from the west, that is from
Galicia. Their road into the city is through a defended
passage-way in the hills which is rarely more than eight
to ten miles wide. On every other side the mountains
are held by the Reds, and so Oviedo is like a little white
peninsula jutting far out into a deep Red sea. This was
obviously an ideal spot for a surprise attack. The Reds
came to within a few hundred yards of the eastern outer
suburbs of Oviedo, were there held in check for a week,
and then a fortnight later driven back to their starting-
posts. During these weeks of fighting Belarmino Tomas
lost more than half his effectives, despite the fact that
they were the picked troops of the Bilbao Red army, and
he was recalled to explain his defeat.

The mechanised units, withdrawn from General
Moscardo’s forces in the south, were free to move off,
and so at last everything was in place for the expected
Nationalist offensive. Even then it was hoped that the
offensive might begin on the 3rd or 4th of March; but

261

THE SPANISH WAR

actually it was not until the 7th that the troops moved
out of their assembly positions at dawn and dashed
forward. The Nationalist plan was apparent the moment
the attack began. The offensive started from the general
line Sigueliza-Alcolea del Pinar. It was conducted by
three very strong columns, admirably prepared for the
tasks which confronted them. The first or right-hand
column, composed of Legionaries under Lieutenant-
Colonel Castejon, had first to clear the hills south and
east of Siguenza so as to capture Cogolludo and then
push down the Soria road and along the small Badiel
river and the Madrid-Barcelona railway line. The centre
column, mainly composed of the new Italian units
recently incorporated in the Legion, was to drive on to
the main Aragon road at Algora and then, sweeping
everything before them, pour down towards Guadalajara.
To the east of the road a third column, acting partly as
flank guard and partly as an offensive force, and made up
of a mixed brigade, was to secure the upper Tajuna valley
at Masegoso and then, driving straight south, capture
Brihuega, whence they would push on as far as Armunaz
on the Cuenca road, thus isolating any Red troops at
Guadalajara and co-operating in the final phase of the
offensive with the centre column.

It was prettily planned, and it very nearly succeeded.
The first set-back was the weather. Sunday morning was
cold and dull, but the roads were dry, no rain having
fallen the previous week, when those valuable days from
February 28 onwards were being “wasted.” The progress
on Sunday was, therefore, rapid, and the Reds put up little
resistance. Cogolludo, Jadraque and Almadrones fell.

The right and centre columns had therefore done well.

On the left the flanking column had seized Masegoso and

262

THE ATTACKS ON THE CORUNNA ROAD

was well on its wav to Brihuega. On Sunday night, while
the staff were preparing orders for the next morning, a
thin drizzle began to fall which on the heights (the
lowest point where fighting took place was at 1,800 feet
altitude) was changed into snow. Monday morning came,
and the drizzle had turned into a blizzard of sleet and
snow. Despite this the three columns pushed ahead and
still made good progress. But they were falling behind
their time schedule. They had twenty-five miles to
cover, fighting all the way, within the next forty-eight
hours if they were to be astride the Cuenca road before
Miaja could bring up his reinforcements.

Lorries and tanks skidded and slid down the mountain
gradients, there were traffic jams where some vehicle
overturned, and the whole military machine worked
slower and slower. Tuesday found the Nationalists only
just south of Brihuega on the left, just south of Trihueque
in the centre, and just north of Hita on the Badiel river
to the right. The storms continued all along the line
with unabated violence. Many mountain tracks assigned
to troops by the staff could not be used at all; all secon¬
dary roads were churned up deep in mud; and at points
even the main Aragon road could only take traffic pro¬
ceeding at a walking pace. The whole advantage of an
intensely mechanised force had been lost. Indeed, it is
possible that in many details horse-drawn traffic would
have been liable to fewer breakdowns. The benefit of
surprise conferred by superior mobility had disappeared.
Already the heads of General Miaja’s counter-attacking
Red columns were moving up from Guadalajara and

from along the Cuenca road. . ,

On Wednesday a half-hearted attempt to continue the
offensive was made and was brought to a standstill by

263

9 *

THE SPANISH WAR

the terrible weather conditions and because of stiffening
resistance from the Reds. Road conditions in the rear
of the Nationalist advance guards were terrible, and traffic
discipline was very poor. It was the first time that most
of these troops had been engaged, and they and their
officers were not as wide awake to the changes of fortune
in modern war as they might have been.

Then came the series of Red counter-attacks. These
attacks were delivered by Miaja’s newly reorganised
brigades, and though they did do a great deal of damage
and did put a stop to the Guadalajara offensive, they
did not score a major victory, as in the circumstances
they might have. Miaja had planned his riposte well.
While with small bodies he counter-attacked the heads
of the Nationalist columns, he had managed to mass
some 15,000 men in the hills along the upper Tagus,
facing the stretch of the Aragon road between Alcolea del
Pinar and Navalpotro, thus directly menacing Nationalist
headquarters and base at Siguenza. He had been aided
in so doing by the bad weather, which deprived General
Moscardo of his eyes, the air force.

It was only on the 12th, that is to say five days after the
Nationalists had started their offensive, that this body of
troops was ready to go into action. Miaja would never
have dared to send them so far north if by that time
General Moscardo had taken Guadalajara and had cut
the Cuenca road. On the contrary, he himself would
have been in full retreat. It is possible, therefore, to
estimate the immense damage done to the Nationalist
position by the bad weather and the unfortunate incidents
which had caused the offensive to be postponed from
March 1 when the weather was fine to March 7 when
an abnormal bad spell began.

264

THE ATTACKS; OH THE''CORUNNA ROAD

The attack was launched at dawn with ample forces of
ta nks and artillery. It came as a complete surprise at
first to the Nationalists, who were not entrenched, but
only held isolated posts in villages and farm-houses. As
the Russian tanks surged out of the rain and mist, followed
by dense waves of infantry, there was little for the
Nationalist outposts to do but fall back slowly on their
reserves. These were not numerous, and were stationed
some distance in the rear, with the result that by noon the
Reds had advanced at some points over six miles and had
made a great gap in the Nationalist left wing. The situa¬
tion at that moment was so serious that General Moscardo,
in his report to General Franco, said, “My left wing is

completely turned.” _ .

The Reds did not push forward in the afternoon witn
so much speed. Out of the traffic muddle, swearing and
sweating Legionary officers had managed to form in good
order a column of some fifty motor-lorries. These rushed
to the threatened point, carrying some old and disciplined
Spanish banderas of the Legion and some companies of
Requetes. These fresh units were thrown at once into
a fierce counter-attack, which in its turn took the Reds
by surprise. By that time the heads of the Red attacking
columns were within one thousand yards of their objec¬
tive, the main Aragon road with its mass of motor traffic
feeding the whole Nationalist line of advance. Had they
reached this road it would have been a minor disaster.
But Legionaries and Requetes were by now coming up
in numbers, and when night fell the Red line had been
pushed back everywhere to over five thousand yardsi from
the road. General Moscardo throughout the night con¬
tinued to rush reinforcements to the threatened position
in so doing even evacuating farther south some of the

265

THE SPANISH WAR

advanced positions he had wrested from the Reds three
days before. The next morning the Reds, still in great
numbers, endeavoured to renew their attack. They met
with such a terrific barrage of machine-gun fire that
nearly everywhere they turned and fled. At many points
the Nationalist command, following a plan hurriedly
prepared by the staff during the night, attacked in their
turn so as to rectify the line and hold a series of strong
points which would render any future Red attacks easy
to repel. It was the 13 th of March. The Red counter¬
attacks had finally failed. But it had also to be said that
the Nationalist offensive had been brought to a standstill
without having accomplished its basic objective, which was
to force General Miaja to evacuate Madrid and to retreat
towards Valencia. It had failed at a moment when
Nationalist hopes were very high, and the corresponding
gloom which followed was very depressing.

A deal of nonsense has been spoken and written about
the Italian failure on the Guadalajara and also later on
another alleged failure at Bermeo during the Bilbao
offensive. I can write with impartiality about both, and
I have to confess that I have been scandalised at the
accounts current in Great Britain, which it is difficult to
attribute to anything but deliberate intention to create
friction between Great Britain and Italy by a series of
calculated falsehoods. What happened at Guadalajara
was that the main Italian column had pushed forward at
very great speed, possibly too fast. On the third day of
the attack some of the advanced units were almost within
sight of the city of Guadalajara itself. One company with
two tanks had passed Torija, leaving that village to be
captured by the main body and had reached the plateau
overlooking the Cuenca road. It had hoped to find troops

266

THE ATTACKS OH THE CORUNNA ROAD

from Brihuega on its right or at least on its right rear, but
the terrible state of the roads had kept back all forces
marching through Brihuega and down the Tajuna valley.
This gallant little Italian company then tried to fight its
way back to its main body on the Aragon road, and was
almost completely wiped out. Many were taken prisoners
by the familiar device used by the Reds, who stationed the
Garibaldi battalions near where the Italians were so that
stray parties would walk right into the Red lines imagm
ing they were once more in touch with their own men.

In the attack far to the rear on the left flank isolated posts
holding farm-houses or small villages were in one or two
cases also cut off. That was the extent of the “disaster,”
really only a minor set-back in a prolonged struggle, and
reflecting no disgrace either on the Italian volunteers or
on the Spanish Nationalist forces and command. The best
proof that this was so was that General Miaja, after his
much-vaunted victory, had not bettered the position of
his forces by one iota and was shortly afterwards to lose
definitely the few villages which he had gained. The
initiative had not been wrested from General Franco..

Exactly the same can be said of the alleged Italian
reverse at Bermeo. There a mixed Legion brigade
known as the Black Arrows was pushing its way along
the coast towards Bilbao. The Italian light column
reached Bermeo by a very gallant dash along a road com¬
pletely dominated by the Reds. They then established
communication by water across the estuary leading to
Guernica. Once more the dash of the mobile column
had taken it ahead of the movements of other troops,
which had to force a more difficult passage through t e
ffills. For a few hours the Italian battalions were isolated

in Bermeo because the road was cut. They were never m

267

THE SPANISH WAR

any danger, they were never thrown out of the town, and
the Reds never set foot in Bermeo again. After about
eight hours of isolation other forces came up, the road
was secured again, and the advance continued. But these
two lies are only fresh examples of the extremes of men¬
dacity to which the professional pacifist, be he British,
French or anything else, will go if he believes that he can
in any way injure or belittle a diplomatic or political
opponent.

268

X

BILBAO
JUNE 19, 1937

P ART of the forces which had been stationed near
Oviedo to be used in case of necessity had been trans¬
ferred to the region of San Sebastian and Vitoria in
preparation for an offensive on the Basque Separatists of
Vizcaya. When the Guadalajara offensive came to its
sterile conclusion and when it was plainly necessary to
stage a fresh offensive, as much to occupy public opinion
as anything else, the Nationalist High Command turned
their attention to the Bilbao front. The terrain was
extremely difficult, and it was obvious that if the
Basques and their Red allies from Santander and Gijon
resisted the campaign would be protracted. There was
little possibility of the rush manoeuvre which had been
projected for the Guadalajara attack. Two deep river
valleys lead to Bilbao, the one from the general direction
of Eibar and Durango and the other from the direction
of Orduna, some miles to the north of the main Burgos—
Vitoria road. High mountains, reaching to a maximum
of 4,500 feet, rose on every hand; the Basque Separatists
were quite at home among those rugged peaks and steep
ravines and capable of defending them to the maximum.

Bilbao had, in recent Spanish history, been besiege
three times and never captured. The Carlists had made
two attempts in the first Carlist war and had been beaten
back. In the first siege they lost their famous General
Zumalacarregui, that genius of guerrilla warfare. Forty

269

THE SPANISH WAR

years later, during the second Carlist war, Bilbao was
besieged for 125 days, being completely cut off from the
outside world, both by land and sea. Batteries set up on
the northern heights threw thousands of shells into the
city, so that hardly a house was left standing when a relief
force finally marched in, just in time to save the city from
surrender. It was thus that Bilbao came by the name of
“Villa Invicta.” It is interesting to note that though
Bilbao was almost razed to the ground during its third
siege it suffered very little during its fourth, and when
General Franco’s victorious troops marched in on
June 19 they found it practically undamaged, save in the
vicinity of the bridges across the Nervion, which had been
blown up by Communists from the notorious Karl
Liebknecht battalion, and where many houses had been
wrecked by the force of the explosions and by huge frag¬
ments of steel which had been hurled through the air.

To understand the operations against Bilbao one must
imagine that the road from east to west, the line of march
of General Franco’s troops, was barred by a series of rocky
mountain ridges running more or less from south to north
and thus forming so many barriers which had to be sur¬
mounted. This is merely a rough approximation, for the
mountain system round Bilbao does not in reality obey
such simple geometrical laws as those governing straight
lines. The mountain ranges are complicated, but as
General Franco nearly always approached them from east
to west it renders the campaign easier to understand to
take them as successive lines.

There were therefore four distinct stages m the
approach to the Basque capital. The first stage was the
freeing of the little town of Villareal, which, only a few
miles out of Vitoria, had been blockaded by the Reds since

270

BILBAO

December. The ineffectual Red attacks against Villareal,
which, for three weeks, held only by two companies of
infantry, was surrounded and besieged by some five
thousand Reds, is a typical example of the lethargy and
lack of initiative which could always be associated with
any Red plan of campaigning.

SKETCH MAP ILLUSTRATING THE OPERATIONS LEADING TO
THE CAPTURE OF BILBAO

Villareal and the roads it dominates having been freed.
General Solchaga, who under General Mola was respon¬
sible for the execution of the plan in its second stage, took
by assault the southern extremities of the chains of
mountains which, running to the sea, barred the main
roads to Bilbao. He captured peaks like the Gorbea, the
Amboto and Urquiola, varying from 4,500 to 3,000 feet
high. These were mostly rude shoulders of naked granite
thrust skywards, but their possession was necessary to
enable each successive barrier to be attacked not from the
front, where the Reds had prepared formidable defence
lines, but from the flanks. Their possession was only
needed for individual operations, and garrisons were not

271

THE SPANISH WAR

kept on their forbidding peaks; so much so that later the
Reds reoccupied Gorbea and held it, though in an
entirely passive way, until a few days before the fall of
Bilbao, when a hurried evacuation became necessary.
Most of its garrison, rather than make a forced march in
retreat, laid down their arms and surrendered.

The third stage was the progress across these lines of
hills once they had been outflanked, first the Enchortas,
then the Monte Calvo and the Lemona, the Vizcargui,
Sollube and Jatta hills. This was perhaps the longest
stage of all, because persistent spells of bad weather inter¬
vened, making air observation difficult and sometimes
impossible, and also because the huge train of artillery
necessary to search these mountain fastnesses for machine-
gun nests had to be moved forward across such difficult
country.

The fourth stage was triumphantly easy and rapid. It
was the piercing of the much-vaunted “Iron Belt” and
the march down from the heights into Bilbao.

I had the good luck to have private intimation that the
fighting in the Bilbao area was really a definite campaign
to secure the fall of the city and would therefore be of
great importance. I decided, therefore, to make either
Vitoria or San Sebastian my headquarters for the time
being and to try once more to arrange a liaison service
across the frontier to carry my messages. On April 7 I
was in the newly occupied and picturesque Basque town
of Ochandiano in time to witness the capture of the
Urquiola range and San Anton de Urquiola, looking down
on Manaria and the road to Durango. Though we did
not know it at the time, this was merely one of the pre¬
liminary moves, like that of a pawn in chess, and was only
to reveal its importance very much later in the campaign.

272

BILBAO

We all thought that the troops would push down from
the heights and clear the direct Vitoria-Durango road
almost at once, thus avoiding the immense detour that
troops and supplies continued to make right round the
whole mountain system to the valley of the Deva river.

The brunt of the attack was borne by Carlists and
Moorish Regulares. When the air force and the artillery
had completed their bombardment of the peaks, which
had a canopy of swirling smoke, the infantry set out.
Practically every company carried a flag, and all the men
had white patches sewn on their shoulders. This was for
the purpose of rapid identification in the difficult fighting
on the slopes, so that the machine-gunners in reserve
positions should not mistake their own troops advancing
for Reds fleeing. The number of flags was so that the
bombing planes should speedily recognise the units they
were flying over and not drop bombs on them. Finally,
we all cheered, General Solchaga and his staff with us, as
we saw the gold and scarlet banner fluttering from the
top peak of the Urquiola range. It was another step
forward to the liberation of Bilbao.

The whole of this campaign in Vizcaya illustrated the
immense difficulties attending the co-operation of bomb¬
ing and machine-gunning aircraft, with infantry advanc¬
ing actively across enemy positions. Now that Bilbao has
been captured and the campaign is at an end, it is possible
to state that in many attacks fully fifty per cent of the
casualties were caused by errors on the part of the
squadrons of bombing planes. At the height and speed
at which modern bombing planes work it is exceedingly
difficult, not so much to secure accurate hits, as to identify
the exact points on the ground which are held by the
enemy and which should be bombed and those held by

273

THE SPANISH WAR

the advancing units of one’s own army. Occasional acci¬
dents, all who are versed in military history know to be
inevitable. How many times during the Great War did
not our artillery fire on our own trenches? But the air
danger is far greater, because the aerial bombardment has
more terrifying effects. Throughout the campaign every
method of signalling was tried and none proved entirely
satisfactory. So much so that on the last days of the
campaign, when the “Iron Belt” had been pierced,
Nationalist planes came over and bombed the outposts of
the First Brigade of Navarre, causing many casualties.

As I have said, every company carried the National flag.
Men took with them immense strips of white linen which
they placed on the ground, in accordance with pre¬
arranged codes, but generally in the form of an arrow
pointing towards the enemy lines. Rockets and flares
were used, and finally it was arranged that when an air
bombardment was due the Nationalist field artillery would
open fire with coloured smoke shells on the enemy
positions which were to be bombed so as to indicate them
clearly. At the same time every precaution was taken
that accurate and speedy information as regards the ad¬
vance of every unit of the Nationalist forces should be
sent back at once. Portable wireless transmitting sets
were carried by each company, and position reports were
flashed back to brigade and divisional headquarters
immediately after every move forward. These were trans¬
mitted via army at once to the air command, but there
is a great difference, especially in such mountainous
country, between knowing a map and recognising it on
the ground.

There was an interval, mainly due to bad weather, after
the capture of Urquiola before the Enchortas—-three

2 74

BILBAO

peaks, standing on the road to Eibar and.Durango—were
taken. I travelled a great deal in the sector during this
time, and was able to estimate the forces collected for the
final assault on Bilbao, for, though we were many miles
from the Basque city, we all realised that the positions
we were taking were but the outer works of the city’s
defences. On the right flank, advancing by the coast
road, was the mixed brigade known as the Black Arrows.
This was mainly composed of Italian volunteers in the
new Legion formations, but it had an admixture of
Spaniards. It was very mobile and was expected to take
advantage of every move in the mountain sectors to make
a bound forward along the coast. It carried out its part
of the programme very well and thus played an essential
though not dominant role in the plan of campaign.
Then, in the difficult hill districts, where the resistance
was greatest, came five Brigades of Navarre. Each
was composed of a varying number of regular battalions
and of Carlist or Requete and Falangist militia battalions.
As was natural for a Brigade of Navarre, the Requetes
were the more numerous. On the left of these corps
came another Legion brigade, the Black Flames, and
on their left yet another, the Blue Arrows. These, I
understand, were almost entirely made up of Italian
volunteers, but they played only a small .part'in the
fighting round Bilbao, though they were used to relieve
the tired-out troops in the subsequent rapid movements
on Santander through Valmaseda.

The Requetes units were to be seen everywhere. They
were fine-looking soldiers and they fought extremely wel.
During the long winter' months they had been wel
trained, and all the Regular Army officers, who by now
mostly commanded these battalions, were outspoken in

THE SPANISH WAR

their admiration. The tercios of Oriamendi, Nuestra
Seiior de Begona, San Ignacio, San Miguel, to mention
only those names which come most readily to my mind as
being those of units I have personally seen in action,
formed as brave and as dashing an infantry as one could
find in any army. Their losses were tremendous. Captain
de Seynes, a French officer, who acted as adjutant to the
tercio of San Ignacio, told me that his battalion had been
renewed from the brigade training depot three times
before the final onslaught on the Lemona peak, when he
himself fell wounded and when his tercio was actually
wiped out by a Red counter-attack. There were just two
hundred rifles on the situation report of the battalion, he
told me, on the night of the counter-attack, and by
morning one hundred and thirty had been evacuated,
wounded, to the clearing-stations, and some seventy were
lying dead on the peak. I talked to officers of the tercio
of Nuestra Seiior de Begona when they marched into
Bilbao on Sunday, June 20, and they told me they had
just seventy rifles left, and that to form a unit they were
being temporarily linked with the tercio of San Miguel,
with only forty-five rifles remaining. That was the price
the Requetes paid for the honour of avenging their dead
in the three previous sieges of Bilbao and for being the
first troops to parade their flags through the conquered
city.

The next stage in the offensive on April 24 was *be
piercing of the mountain barriers protecting Eibar, the
town of arms manufactures, and Durango, practically an
outer suburb of Bilbao. The Reds had fortified very
strongly the three Enchorta peaks and that of Santa
Maria, which look down the valley to Vergara, held by the
Nationalists, and block the roads through three passes,

276

BILBAO

that of Campanazar and the double one of Elgueta, which
on the left hand leads to Durango, and on the right to
Eibar. Undoubtedly they fully expected the Nationalists
to attack them on the front, and it seemed almost im¬
possible for the blow to be delivered in any other way.
The Red left flank was protected by the strong hills round
Eibar, and their right flank rested on what appeared to
be the invulnerable position of Mount Udala. This
mountain, some 3,000 feet high, is a great ridge of granite
with a culminating peak and is only accessible by a few
goat-paths along deep ravines. The Reds had two
battalions occupying it with a score of machine-guns and
a battery of mountain artillery. Their access to it was
by the Campanazar pass.

The Nationalists wished everybody to believe that the
attack was going to be frontal, and they expended an
immense amount of energy, together with about five
thousand air bombs and some thirty thousand shells, to
make the Reds confident that the Enchortas were going
to be attacked from the direction of Vergara. The whole
body of Press correspondents was specially invited to
witness the attack. We went to an artillery observation
post and we saw one of the greatest air and artillery bom¬
bardments that had taken place during the whole war.
Scores of batteries of every calibre from field-pieces to
g ian t ten-inch howitzers sent their thousands of shells
against the rocky heights. A hundred aeroplanes came
and went almost without interruption, dropping their
heavy bombs. And then nothing took place. A staff
officer giving an account of the day’s activities mentioned,
as if accidentally, that there had been some slight progress
in the Aramayona valley. And there was the key to the
whole situation, as we found out two days later. The

*77

THE SPANISH WAR

Reds had been fooled; so had we. The bombardment of
the Enchortas and of Santa Maria was merely to keep the
Reds busy while the First and Second Brigades of Navarre
moved down the Aramayona and other valleys, seized the
reverse side of Campanazar and then boldly rushed the
heights of Udala. The first tercio up the Udala was that
of San Ignacio, and it lost fifty per cent of its effectives.
The Reds apparently at first did not realise that an attack
was being planned on their rear, and they actually allowed
the assault companies to climb the ravines, seaming the
side of the mountain, to within a few hundred yards of
their front-line trenches before they tried to bring their
machine-guns to bear on them. Two companies of
the San Ignacio tercio with Captain de Seynes at their
head had managed to reach a shoulder of the hill where
they enfiladed the general trench line, and from that
moment all was comparatively easy. Udala was held
by the Nationalists, though it was not until forty-eight
hours that it was properly mopped up and all its garrison
captured.

Early the next morning the Second Brigade of Navarre
was pushing along the road to Elorrio, behind the
Enchortas. They had instructions to attack the heights
from the rear at eight a.m. But at 7.50 their wireless
signallers received counter-orders. The Reds, realising
they were being surrounded, had evacuated the whole line
of heights before dawn and had fled in the direction of
Durango and Eibar. Orders now were to turn half left
and pursue them through Elorrio towards Durango and
at the same time to seize the hills overlooking Eibar—un¬
happy Eibar, already in flames. Eibar fell the next day.
Nationalist tanks entered and occupied Durango at the
same time, but as Red artillery was still in position and

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BILBAO

several strong Red counter-attacks were made, they had
to withdraw, and Durango, though surrounded and form¬
ing a kind of no man’s land, was not occupied and firmly
held till a week later.

The moment had come for the right wing to move
forward. The 5th Brigade of Navarre and the Black
Arrow Brigade, -working in conjunction, covered the
coastal area, and within a few days Marquina and
Guernica had fallen. Guernica has been one of the
Basque towns most talked of in the world’s Press, and for
reasons which it is difficult to understand. Imagine for a
moment that the accusations of Aguirre, so well and
faithfully reproduced in the Press, had been true. Sup¬
pose that this little Basque town, no more sacred, of no
greater weight in the eternal scale of values than any
other little Basque town, had really been bombed, and
that really hundreds of its inhabitants had been killed.
Would that have been any worse or any better than when
the Reds bombarded the public gardens of Valladolid, for
instance, and killed over eighty children, or when they
bombarded Saragossa, killing over one hundred women
and children? Yet what Radical or Socialist newspaper
in Europe, which had screamed with banner lines over
the atrocity of Guernica, ever mentioned the other bom¬
bardments? On the other hand, let us suppose that the
allegations as regards Guernica were untrue or only true
in part. What, then, was the wilful duplicity of those
who stormed with indignation about reports of which
they were uncertain and about reports which the slightest
investigation would have shown at the very best to have
been purposely exaggerated so as to provide a platform
for Red propaganda ? What did those who wrote in Eng¬
land and in France about the atrocities of Guernica know

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THE SPANISH WAR

of the case? Had any of them even heard of Guernica
before? What did any of them know of the technique of
air bombardments, to be deceived by such claptrap lies as
were furnished by the ever-fertile propaganda office of
Bilbao?

I admit I was not present at Guernica when the so-
called bombardment took place and when certainly the
city was burnt. But neither were any of the alleged eye¬
witnesses in Guernica at the time. They were all brought
up later, mostly at night, when the city was burning, and
were told what had taken place. Convenient witnesses
were brought forward to confirm these stories. Since then
I have read in European newspapers the more lurid and
detailed accounts of what happened. One of the princi¬
pal organs of opinion, through its correspondent in Bilbao,
declared how not only had Guernica been burnt but that
the bombing planes had set fire to all the farms around
and that they were all blazing like torches. I have visited
Guernica not once but a dozen times, and by every road
into the town, and not a single farm or homestead outside
of Guernica has been touched by flame or smoke. What
then was it that this particular correspondent saw?
Another report from Bilbao was so vivid in its impression
of what took place that it actually described how the crew
of the German planes leant out as the planes swooped
down and threw their “hand grenades” at the people in
the town. Did he mean bombs or hand grenades, and
since when have either been thrown by hand from crews
leaning out of planes? Mention this to an airman, and he
will laugh; and yet it was such lying nonsense that swept
with passionate emotion half Europe. Who were the
people responsible for such stories I do not want to know,
but I can record what I actually saw myself and what

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BILBAO

I heard from British and French correspondents who
entered the town before me. First of all, none of them
saw the number of dead who would have been lying in the
streets and in the highways leading to the town had even
one-tenth of the stories told been true. Yet the National¬
ists had had no time to fake the situation. The corre¬
spondents entered Guernica within a few hours of the
first Nationalist patrols. So the hundreds of people shot
down by the machine-gunning planes or killed by the
bombing had all disappeared. The burnt-out farms had
recovered their calm, green aspect. What I saw was the
interior of the town, which I visited for hours on end,
independently and alone. Certainly Guernica had been
bombed by Nationalist planes, and many of these were
presumably of German or Italian origin and had, perhaps,
German or Italian pilots. The signs were there, as in
many other towns near the front, for everybody to see.
Did we complain when Villers Bretonneux was bombed
by the Germans, or they when we did the same to a town
immediately behind the lines? Are artillery parks or
inf antry dumps to be protected because they happen to
be in towns ten or twelve miles behind the lines? This
has nothing to do with the doctrine that open towns
should not be bombarded, a theory which might have
applied to Saragossa or Valladolid, but not to Guernica,
which, to all intents and purposes, was part of the Red
fighting machine.

Where air bombs had fallen the result was the same as
at Burgos or Valladolid or Durango or Marcpiina the
house had collapsed, houses near by had suffered, the
roadway was scarred and pitted. Nothing else had
happened. At Guernica there were bombed houses,
crumpled up and in ruins, but they were unscathed bj

281

THE SPANISH WAR

fire. At Guernica there were houses burnt out, their
blackened facades outlined against the sky, but they were
not pitted by bomb fragments, and the roadway showed
no scars. I examined several buildings with great care to
establish, in my own opinion beyond doubt, as far as this
could be possible, the origin of the separate fires which
had undoubtedly ravaged Guernica and burnt down more
than three-quarters of the town. As a result I can state
that it seemed to me—I am not an expert—that un¬
doubtedly the fires were entirely apart from the destruc¬
tion caused by air bombs. The majority of the burned
houses—whole streets of them—showed not the slightest
signs of damage by bombing. It has been said that this
is because the bombs used were incendiary with slight
explosive force. I know incendiary bombs when I see
them, and I have seen them during the campaign: they
were often used to set fire to the pine woods in which the
Reds kept their ammunition dumps and their reserves.
But I could not see in these burned-out streets of
Guernica a single sign of an incendiary bomb having
burst outside the burnt-out houses. None of them had
burst in gardens or in the road.

I visited an isolated villa, a blackened shell. It, accord¬
ing to the Red theory, must have been hit by an incen¬
diary bomb. Its garden was fresh with roses, the turf was
green, the little pergola and the tool-shed were intact;
they were not burnt or even scorched. And so we have
to believe that one incendiary bomb struck and set fire to
the villa and that no others fell anywhere near.

In the centre I saw the ruins, also blackened with
smoke, of a large building. I do not know what it was;
possibly a cafe or perhaps a store. It had a long glass
awning on its principal facade. One corner had been

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BILBAO

broken by an air bomb explosion and repaired. The hole
where the bomb struck was -visible in the street; the marks
on the wall and on the glasswork could also be seen. But
it was evident that the building had survived long alter.
Then had come this mysterious fire. The ruined and
broken front wall was blackened, but the glass awning was
intact. More, the electric light bulbs were all in place
and, though smoke begrimed, were all intact. What
strange explosive bombs, which left no trace of explosion
behind them, which broke no glass, which never hit the
road and yet set fire to all the housesl

A few weeks later, when the Nationalist attack had got
dangerously near the vaunted “Iron Belt” at Amorebieta,

I spent many hours watching that town. No Nationalist
batteries were shelling it, no aeroplanes were in the sky,
as there was a torrential downpour of rain. And yet it
began to burn, just as Guernica had done, and Eibar
before that, and Iran long before that. This time no
German or Italian planes could be blamed, just as none
of them could have been blamed for Irun. But none the
less Amorebieta, another little Basque town, loved by its
inha bitants and as sacred to them as was Guernica to its
townsfolk, was burning. I visited Amorebieta later, and it
looked just like Guernica. There were houses destroyed
by bombs and there were houses which had been burnt.
What is the conclusion? Both towns were hit in the
normal course of war by bombs and damaged. Both
towns were burnt, outside of any pretence of military
necessity, by Communists or Anarchists enraged at having
to abandon them to a hated foe. All else is untrue, all
else is the fabrication of a system of propaganda which has
lived on lies since its famous first declarations in July 1936
to the effect that the movement had been suppressed and

283

THE SPANISH WAR

that the control of the Madrid Government had been
restored throughout Spain.

, The taking of the heights of Monte Calvo, Vizcargui,
Sollube and Jatta was a slow process. General Mola, one
of the ablest strategists, was determined that in these hills
he would not give a single chance to the enemy to gain
any local advantage by surprise, and so each further step
forward was only taken after previous gains had been
properly consolidated and miles of trenches had been dug
and barbed-wire belts put in position. The Nationalist
High Command was also still bringing up artillery and
material for the final onslaught on the “Iron Belt” and
repairing roads and railways behind the front.

I had two adventures during this period which were
somewhat out of the way. Having gone to the outposts
in front of Amorebieta, from which dense columns of
smoke were rising, with a companion, I decided that it
would be interesting to enter the little town. I had
questioned scores of its inhabitants who, with suit-cases
and bundles, were toiling in the rain up the hill paths,
abandoning their burning houses, and they had told me
that Amorebieta was entirely deserted and that only an
occasional Red patrol came down into the main street.
The officer in command of the sector gave his permission,
and ordered three Requetes to come with us as guides and
escort in the unlikely event of our running up against any
Reds. With my companion, M. Georges Botto, I started
off down the slopes. We kept close to hedgerows and took
advantage of every bit of cover we could find, as the hills
in front, just a thousand yards distant, were held by strong
forces of Reds. Half-way down we came across another
officer who, with a strong patrol, was searching all the
farm-houses for Reds who might be in concealment.

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BILBAO

When he heard where we were going he expressed his
regret he could not accompany us and added three more
men to our escort. It was then that we started getting
into trouble. The six Requetes of our escort, thinking
that progress in single file behind hedges was not military¬
looking enough, suddenly deployed in line, and with rifles
at the ready started advancing across the open. The
result was what we expected. There came first one
bullet, then another, and finally the grassy orchard
through which we were moving was alive with" the short,
sharp whistle of machine-gun bullets. To the Reds it
looked as if we were the advance guard of a company
moving down to occupy Amorebieta. When at last we
got to a sunken road we managed to recall our blundering
though well-meaning escort, and Captain Aguilera, the
Press officer with us, gave them orders not to move in the
open and we set off again. Down the little lane, overhung
with pink rambler roses, in complete safety as the machine-
gun bullets were whistling well overhead, we reached a
little farm-house on the very edge of the town. Here we
left two of our escort as a sort of rallying party to guard
our retreat, and on we went another couple of hundred
yards to a turn in the street which entered Amorebieta
not far from the church. M. Botto was, with Captain
Aguilera, leading at this point, and as they looked round
the corner there came the crack, crack of bullets fired
from close proximity, and the crash of a volley followed
immediately by the loud rattle of a machine-gun. I
crawled up to them and asked what had happened. We
all three entered the corner house and this time looked
cautiously through a window. There was another crash
of rifle fire and tiles fell from the roof. It was apparent
that the Reds, who had watched our progress, had sent a

2§5

THE SPANISH WAR

strong party down into the town to try to cut us off.
Our decision was not long to take. We had come to visit
Amorebieta, not to capture it from a Red garrison, and
so we retired up the hill, pursued every time we had
to cross the open by that annoying whistle of bullets.
Though one may know that the fire is inaccurate, that
the bullets are really yards away, yet the impression is
definitely unpleasant, and all the more so when one’s back
is turned to the direction of fire. As we were a large party
I waited with two or three others and allowed half our
number go to on ahead, and then, one after the other, we
made our little spurts across the open and dodged from
tree to tree, feeling rather out of breath and rather self-
conscious. All this time it was raining hard, and as we
had an eight-mile trudge back to our cars we were all
rather tired by the time we got back to Vitoria, then our
base.

The other adventure was when very late one night a
small party of journalists, including Mr. Massock, of the
Associated Press, M. Max Massot, of Le Journal , M.
Georges Botto, of the Havas Agency, and myself were
returning from the front on Mount Jatta with our in¬
separable guide. Captain Aguilera. We had lost sight of
Captain Aguilera’s white car, one of the most tempera¬
mental cars I have ever seen. It either rushed ahead at
some seventy miles an hour, taking corners in hair-raising
style, or else it sulked and the whole line of Press cars was
reduced to following it at not much faster than a walking
pace. That night, though, it was in a hurry and had got
far ahead. We had just skirted the base of the Vizcargui
hills and were approaching the Monte Calvo, a sector we
knew almost by heart, when we saw three red rockets go
up from the Nationalist front line, which at that point

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BILBAO

was only a few hundred .yards from the road. A minute
later inferno was let loose. Every battery began to fire,
and as we stopped our cars and dimmed our lights -it
appeared to ns as if every copse and hedgerow on the left
of the road—the enemy line was on the right—contained
a battery. There were field-grins, there were howitzers,
and there were long-muzzled six-inchers. But they were
not the only guns firing,, for the enemy were plastering
the countryside with high explosives and, judging from
the pattering in the trees, with shrapnel also. Mean¬
while the crest of the Monte Calvo and the trench lines
running down to join with the Vizcargui hills were
blazing with the fire from machine-guns, and the racket
was enormous.

We had blundered right into the middle of a counter¬
attack. We did not feel we should progress with our’ cars
along a road that was being swept by bullets and which
we knew had several nasty corners where it swung almost
right up to the front line and might be cut at any moment.
On foot we walked forward to the nearest post to try to
find out what had happened to our guide. But we had
not gone more than four hundred yards when we ran right
into him. He had put out his lights and was slowly nosing
his way back towards us. We stood at that comer, next
to two batteries, one Spanish and one Italian, which were
firing as fast as they could go, and discussed the situation.
Though we knew the ground so well it was difficult to
form an opinion of what was taking place. We were told
that all the reserves had been ordered to stand to, but
that none of them had been sent up yet to the front line,

. where apparently all was going well. We shifted our
position after about half an hour to obtain better shelter
from stray bullets and to be a little farther from the

287

IQ

THE SPANISH WAR

deafening noise of the batteries. We found a small stone
hut which gave adequate protection, and round the corner
we could watch the whole Monte Calvo line.

By this time it was evident that the enemy attacking
waves must have filtered through the pine copses quite
close to the front line, for above the rattle of rifles and
machine-guns we could distinctly hear the explosion of
hand grenades. The roar and din of the attack went on
with sudden five minutes’ intervals of silence for some¬
thing like two hours, and it was only when all was quiet
that we walked back to our cars. Even then the road
control officer would not let us run straight down to
Durango, distant only about four miles. He told us that
the Red attack had been repulsed, but that in hand-to-
hand fighting in woods it was never known whether some
small party of enemy might not have got through some
gap and that therefore the Durango road was barred
until it had been closely patrolled by a section of armoured
cars which would arrive just before dawn. We had there¬
fore to turn our cars and make a forty-mile detour by way
of Marquina, Eibar and Vergara before arriving at Vitoria
at one o’clock in the morning.

Pena de Lemona was soon afterwards captured and held
despite frantic Red counter-attacks that had to be re¬
pulsed three times before the Nationalists could entrench
themselves and make their hold secure. Everything
seemed to be going well, and then one afternoon the
Nationalist army was plunged in mourning. It was
June 3, and I well remember the day; I had been out to the
front and returned half an hour ahead of our Press officer,
now Major Lambarri. Outside the Press office I met the
corporal of Requetes, in charge of the swift motor-cycle
service, which carried my messages to the French frontier

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BILBAO

to be retransmitted to London. Tears were streaming
down his face and I asked him what was .the matter.
“General Mola is dead,” he replied, “killed in an air
smash.”

I telephoned at once to General Headquarters and
learnt that the sad news was true. I had spoken to the
General only a few days previously, when he inaugurated
the military bridge at Manaria, which linked Vitoria to
Durango by the direct road through the Urquiola moun¬
tains, just freed from the enemy. I remembered how he
had greeted me at the outset of the movement and that
the first safe conduct given me on July 23, 1936, had been
signed by him. The story of the cause of General Mola’s
death was extremely simple, and there was no truth in the
statements published soon after, inspired by Red propa¬
gandists and so readily repeated, that there was a mystery
and that Anarchists had at last with the connivance of a
member of his staff taken their revenge.

General Mola, on the morning of June 3, was due to
leave Vitoria for a staff conference at Valladolid. He
remained over late studying a report from the front, and
decided, much against the advice of his staff, to travel by
aeroplane as far as Burgos and thence to go on by motor¬
car, He left Vitoria aerodrome in his own communica¬
tion plane, with two members of his staff and with his own
personal pilot, who was an intimate friend and associate
of his. The weather was extremely bad and visibility
almost nii. When only a few miles from Burgos the pilot
began to descend, seeking the signals from the aerodrome.
He went lower than he had intended and suddenly the
plane flew straight into a hill. That was the tragic end.
All the passengers were flung out and all were killed on
the spot.

289

THE SPANISH WAR

The loss of General Mola was felt very much at first,
not only because of the glorious career of the General and
the great military services he had rendered to the move¬
ment, but also because it was felt that General Mola’s
political tendencies might in a way correct any excessive
swing towards the Left, not so much by General Franco
himself as by some of his intimate advisers. General
Mola, though Cuban born (Cuba in 1887, the year of his
birth, was a Spanish colony) was an ardent Nationalist
and was associated most intimately with Pampeluna, where
he was buried, and the Requetes whose brigades he had
tended and trained with such jealous care.

This accident, which caused a series of changes in the
High Command, also delayed once more the operations
against Bilbao. It was obviously necessary to allow the
new commander of the forces in the north, General
Davila, time to study the plan of operations and to make
any changes he wished. The foreign generals—for the
Italian units and the German artillery and air chiefs had
to be consulted—were not always extremely amenable,
and it had been part of General Mola’s duty to smooth
things over between the Spanish High Command, which
always had the last word, and these foreign subordinates.
In the circumstances General Franco himself thought he
had better take a hand, as he was more readily listened to
and obeyed than might be another Spanish general. The
result, therefore, in the long run, was that the operations
were speeded up. General Franco has always been a man
of rapid decisions and in favour of the speediest move¬
ments on the field of battle. His position enabled him to
issue decisive orders to his foreign collaborators, and so the
war machine ran more smoothly and more speedily.

The vital day of the attack, and the day which really

290

BILBAO

spelt the downfall of Bilbao and of all the Basque resis¬
tance in the north as far as Santander, was Friday, June 11.
On that day General Franco ordered the first attack to be
made on the “Iron Belt.” He had chosen his terrain
extremely well, though I must confess that it shocked me
when I arrived on the spot early on Friday morning and
discovered that the Nationalists were to deliver, what I
thought was foreign to all their strategy, a frontal attack
in the very centre of a defensive line. I came up with the
staff headquarters of Colonel Garcia Valino, of the ist
Brigade of Navarre, that morning at Mugica, and was told
that the plan was for three of the Brigades of Navarre to
attack across the Cordillera of Fica, and then the next day
across the Urusti hills in the direction of Castelumendi,
thus cutting right through the “Iron Belt.” On the
ground the plan, however, looked an extremely good one.
The Cordillera of Fica, covered by the Red advance lines,
was a continuation of the Vizcargui hills running at a
slightly lower altitude in the general direction south-east
to north-west. Once it had been captured, together with
the village of San Martin de Fica, the next range of hills,
and Castelumendi, the main line of Red resistance was
only two thousand yards distant, and there were several
good lines of approach for an infantry attack.

General Franco, always a believer in having the utmost
strength at the vital spot, had crowded the valley behind
Vizcargui and all the slopes of Monte Calvo with batteries.
Never have I seen so many in Spain in so small an area.
There were guns of every calibre up to huge twelve-inch
howitzers, and all of them were firing at full speed. Some
batteries had been advanced through the woods to the
fringe of Vizcargui, where there were no roads which even
a tractor could take, and bullock-carts with two slate-blue

291

THE SPANISH WAR

animals were straining through the mud of the deep
sunken paths—it had rained a few days earlier—carrying
shells to the mountain batteries in position on the heights.
It was evident that every nerve was to be strained to
secure speed, and at every village behind the attacking line
there were parks of tractors and lorries ready for any
emergency, mule trains collected from every village for
miles to the rear with peasant drivers pressed for the
moment, while other bodies of peasants were standing by
with picks and spades ready to be rushed up for road
repair work at any urgent point. General Franco, who,
with General Davila, had established his headquarters at
Durango, was moving about the roads all the time seeing
that his orders for speed were being carried out, while
General Solchaga was at his advance headquarters at
Larrebezua town hall, where I saw him that morning and
was able to bring up for him and his staff a little French
claret, which they greatly appreciated.

After the bombardment, tripled by some twenty
bombing squadrons from the air, Colonel Valino’s units
began to move along the hog’s-back linking the Vizcargui
range with the Cordillera of Fica, while the troops of the
5th Brigade of Navarre came up from the valley. Close
though we were to the fighting (Colonel Garcia Valino
was never more than two thousand yards from his most
advanced units and usually much closer), it was difficult
to follow the engagement taking place under the cover of
pine copses and brushwood. Now and then there was a
terrific rattle of machine-gun fire, and now and then the
glint of the scarlet and gold colours of pain could be
seen. But early in the afternoon we 1 .ad left Mugica
behind us, had passed through the village of Andramari,
where a few Red shells were sullenly falling, and were

292

BILBAO

climbing the Cordillera. From the top there was a view
which extended to the opening of the Bilbao estuary to
the north, but not revealing Bilbao.

I had to wait several days for a sight of the Basque
capital. Straight in front of us were the Urusti hills and
Castelumendi, the “Iron Belt” itself. From the Colonel’s
command post, a small redan of sandbags, perched on the
highest crag of the Cordillera, I could look down through
his double prismatic periscope straight at the works of the
“Iron Belt.” They were plainly recognisable and easy
targets for the artillery which was even at that moment
battering away at them. The Colonel pointed them out,
and I picked them up without hesitation. There was a
line of blockhouses, clumsily covered with green branches,
there a semi-circular machine-gun nest, there a series of
V trenches, and there a main line of resistance. Squad¬
rons of bombing planes were flying in line overhead,
turning and coming down the front of the Red position,
dropping their huge bombs in an orderly procession.
They were so close that one could see the bombs, great
shining silver exclamation marks, oscillate as they fell
through the air. “Much too close for comfort,” a staff
officer grumbled, and he pointed to several stiff figures,
wrapped in blankets, lying in a shell-hole near us.
“Good fellows, those; killed this morning by our own
planes.”

Strange, but in the clear Spanish sky it was often
possible to watch the flight not only of air bombs but also
of shells. Heavy shells from the big howitzers were
clearly visible, but the most amusing of all to watch were
the pennated shells from the three-inch trench mortars.
These had an extremely high angle of flight, and it was
interesting to watch them go upwards like silvery birds,

293

THE SPANISH WAR

glistening in the sun, turn over, invisible for a second, and
then explode.

The attack on the Castelumcndi positions was set for
two o’clock in the afternoon. From my position half-way
down the slopes of the Cordillera I could not have been
five hundred yards from the Nationalist advance guards,
and before the attack began there was a constant whistle
of machine-gun bullets from the Reds. I had been watch¬
ing the whole series of Red lines closely during the
bombardment and had even been able to see the Reds
running to their dug-outs when the bombing planes
approached and leaving them as soon as that danger was
over. The Red garrison had withstood the heat of both
the artillery and the air bombardment extremely well.
What was our surprise, therefore, when suddenly we saw
them pouring out of the trenches, crossing the roads
which led westward to Bilbao. I counted a good hundred
of them, and I must have missed twice as many. What
was up? I searched the line of crests and then saw the
reason. Far away on my right were fluttering the flags
of the 5th Brigade, while straight in front of me along
the topmost line of pine trees I could see progressing at
an incredible speed the foremost flag of the 1st Brigade.
Other columns and other flags were swarming up the
ravines and crossing the line of V trenches. The Red
garrison, which had withstood the bombardment, had
given way the moment they saw their enemy close at hand.
It was difficult to understand. Still more difficult to
understand when one knew that every position thus
yielded by them they obstinately counter-attacked in the
hours of darkness, with great bravery though small success.

It was thus that the “Iron Belt” was pierced. All that
evening and all that night General Franco pushed his

294

BILBAO

troops through the gap thus caused. The 1st and the
5th Brigades went right on almost without interruption
to the heights of Santa Marina, which look down on Dos
Caminos, the southern suburb of Bilbao. The Black
Arrow Brigades, which had captured Plencia, were push¬
ing down in their sector, cleaning up all the ground west
of the “Iron Belt,” and were within seventy-two hours to
seize Las Arenas, the fashionable seaside suburb of the
Basque capital. Other troops were assembling at Galda-
cano and Lemona, and the Reds were not to be allowed a
minute’s respite.

During the next two days I inspected the Reds’ con¬
crete defences along the “Iron Belt,” both in the hills of
Castelumendi and Santa Marina and also at the hinge
it made down on the river level at Galdacano. The
machine-gun emplacements were good. The barbed-wire
belts were deep. But three-quarters of the system, owing
to General Franco’s energetic attack, had never been used.
The Reds were also faulty in never having dreamt that
the system might be pierced and in not building switch
lines to prevent the whole barrier being overrun at once.

There is a story of deep interest behind the Red plans
for the building of the “Iron Belt.” They impressed not
only manual labour but also the services of all the engi¬
neers they could lay hands on. One of these, who took a
prominent part in designing the line of defences, was’ a
Nationalist trapped in Bilbao. He carried on his work
and waited his opportunity, and managed at the beginning
of June to cross the lines, taking with him complete plans
of all the defences of Bilbao. I saw him at Colonel
Valino’s headquarters, in the blue uniform of a Captain
of Falangists, with his precious drawings in front of him,
on which were indicated every machine-gun position,

295

IO'

THE SPANISH WAR

every trench and every sap. This was undoubtedly of
great use to the Nationalist High Command. At Galda-
cano the Reds had built an enormous network of trenches—
some five thousand yards were covered by them—and
the machine-gun posts in echelon were in six lines. Here
again, however, few of the positions ever seem to have
been occupied. It is true that the positions were out¬
flanked on the north by Santa Marina and on the south
by the Pena de Lemona. The fall of Galdacano might
have been followed almost immediately by the entry of
the Nationalists into Bilbao, as it gave them full command
of the suburb of Dos Caminos and the southern gates of
the city. Generals Franco and Davila had decided, how¬
ever, to make a peaceful entry, if possible, and therefore
to capture, first of all, the line of heights both east and
south-west of the city.

On the day before Bilbao actually fell, that is on
June 18 ,1 climbed the heights dominating the Santander
railway station and only a thousand yards or so from the
southern limits of the city. Major Lambarri, the new
Press officer, was accompanying us, and he moved forward
faster than any man of his bulk—he is not thin—I have
ever seen. We were on a footpath which wound round
the hill, on the top of which we could see friends from a
Falangist battalion waving to us. They went on waving,
and we progressed at Major Lambarri’s rapid pace until
suddenly we found that we had run straight into a
machine-gun barrage. Fortunately it was slightly high,
but it was on all fours that we turned and made our way
back to shelter. The signs from above had not been of
welcome but of warning. When we cut straight up the
hill to the top we were greeted by officers who told us to
keep low as the machine-gun fire was very persistent and

296

BILBAO

they had just lost two men from stray bullets. We made
our way to the front of the position where we could look
down on Bilbao, and sat there drinking in the scene. The
light was not very good, as the sun was sinking, but Bilbao
looked beautiful and peaceful. Gradually the machine-
gun fire ceased, and a few minutes later we were all
standing up and walking round on the forward slope of
the hill and not a single bullet whistled by. I felt then
that all was over and that the Reds were not going to
fight for Bilbao any more.

The next day, Saturday, our little group of war corre¬
spondents with two Press officers, Major Lambarri and
Captain Aguilera, were standing on the hill of Santo
Domingo under the shadow of the giant wireless masts
looking down again on Bilbao. It had not yet been occu¬
pied, but here and there on the right or nearer bank of
the Nervion we could see a Nationalist flag fluttering on
a roof. On the winding road from the city there came a
small open motor-car. In it was an officer of the National¬
ist tank corps and two police officers from Bilbao. They
had come to announce that five battalions of Basque
Separatist troops still in the town were prepared to
surrender and that, as far as they knew, all the Red
extremists had left Bilbao and that there would be no
further resistance. As they made their report, there was
a sudden burst of machine-gun fire, but from far west of
Bilbao on the Santander road. The Nationalist troops
encircling the city had reached the Santander road and
were occupying it in force. The news agency representa¬
tives rushed to motor-cars or to motor-cycles to send off
the news that Bilbao had been captured. It was true in
one sense and yet, as we found an hour or so later, some¬
what premature, as no soldiers of General Franco’s army

297

THE SPANISH WAR

had yet set foot in the city. We were all feverish with
excitement and pressing Major Lambarri to proceed with
us down the hill through the suburb of Begona and into
Bilbao. The Major was as anxious as we were to move
forward, and within half an hour we were swinging down¬
hill as fast as we could go. Half-way down we ran into an
advance post of Falangists who refused to allow us to go
on. But just then a colonel passed, and when he was
appealed to he said: “I cannot give you permission, as
nobody is to be allowed to cross the line of pickets and
enter Bilbao, but of course I can always look the other
way and not know that you have gone.” And with great
courtesy he looked the other way, though five minutes
later he was still waving his hand to us as we plunged into
the suburbs of Bilbao and were lost to his view.

In the suburbs we saw nobody. In the distance, at
street corners, a form would appear and disappear with
almost suspicious speed. We made our way through the
silent steel-works of Echeverry and down by short cuts
to the streets on the right bank of the Nervion.
There were a few broken windows, but no signs of the
fearful air and artillery bombardment which, according
to Red reports, had wrecked Bilbao. There was indeed
hardly a house showing more damage than a few displaced
tiles or a few broken panes of glass. On the quayside we
met the first inhabitants of Bilbao—half a dozen pretty
girls, a score of old women and men, and a few children.
They looked at us in amazement, and then broke out into
a feeble cheer. They were still dazed by the sufferings of
the last months and still in doubt as to whether the good
news that the siege was over was really true. But they
cried “Viva Espafia” and clustered round us. We said we
wanted to cross the river to the centre of the town, and

298

BILBAO

they took us along the quay to where there were some
boats. Before leaving, the Reds had blown up all the
bridges, including the new swing bridge which had been
inaugurated only a fortnight earlier. One of the leaves of
the bridge, weighing some two hundred tons, was standing
upright in the middle of the Nervion. The other had
been blown to pieces, and we saw fragments of it weighing
many tons three hundred yards away. In the vicinity of
the bridges there were many badly damaged houses, but
they had suffered as a result of the dynamite explosions,
the work of the infamous Karl Liebknecht battalion, and
not from shell or bomb. Barges were still smoking in the
river, burnt to the water’s edge, but we scrambled on
board a couple of leaking wherries, and pushing off, soon
rowed across, the correspondents and the Press officers
vying with each other at the oars. Up the landing-stairs
as fast as we could go, and along a side street into the
Gran Via we went.

The Gran Via was almost empty, but we could divine
more than see that thousands of pairs of eyes were
scrutinising us through the windows of the tall houses
which line this very fine avenue. Three of us, myself
included, were wearing the scarlet beret of the Carlists,
two of us, Major Lambarri and Captain Aguilera, were in
uniform, and there was another in Falangist blue. This,
and especially the scarlet berets, seemed to convince the
inhabitants, and they began to pour out into the streets,
while the Nationalist flags, which they had kept hidden
for so long, fluttered from balcony to balcony, and at the
same time the few Basque Separatist flags, easily distin¬
guishable with their green flame, disappeared. I saw one
old woman who had tied the Separatist flag to her foot
and was dragging it behind her in the dust. It was the

299

THE SPANISH WAR

one jarring note of the day. But the crowd that now
poured along the Gran Via had become as demonstrative
as the city had previously been cold and reserved. We
were seized upon and pulled this way and that. I saw
Major Lambarri surrounded by women, old and young,
and kissed on both cheeks and on the hands. He was
striving to shout “Viva Esparia,” but his voice was
strangled with emotion, and besides, he had to cope with
a score of people at once who wished to enfold him in
their arms, to take him off his feet and shoulder him, to
seize biin by the hand, to ask him a dozen questions. We
started laughing, and then it was our turn. There were
shouts of “Viva Navarra,” a compliment to our Requete
berets, and Captain Aguilera, the Falangist Senor
Molinero, and all the rest of us were separated and each
became the centre of a crowd of enthusiastic patriots,
simply mad with joy. Processions were formed and
marched up and down the Gran Via with the National
flag at their head. We were assembled in the midst of one
which escorted us in triumph to the palace of the Pro¬
vincial Assembly, a magnificent stone building—Bilbao is
a city of great edifices, every bank being housed in a
palatial building. There the old Separatist Guards, men
in blue uniforms, with scarlet Basque caps, six-footers
every one of them, presented arms and flung wide open
the great iron gates which had been kept closed since
President Aguirre had fled the city.

We were glad for a moment to be able to leave the
crowd and breathe freely. It had been embarrassing, and
my companions and I had wondered whether it would not
have been tactful perhaps to have pocketed our’ scarlet
berets, as we felt that possibly we were being cheered and
welcomed under false pretences. The crowd thought we

300

BILBAO

were real Spanish. Requetes and not merely honorary
members of that patriotic body. But it was difficult to
do so once the shouting and cheering had started, and
we also realised that collectively we had done much
for Nationalist Spain, and that that was the reason,
that the Carlist Junta had honoured us by giving us
positions in their organisation. Major Lambarri merely
laughed when I mentioned it to him, and said: “Don’t
boast; I was kissed by much prettier girls than you.”
Captain Aguilera, I am afraid, was not quite so pleased.
His strict military mind and his personal political ten¬
dencies made him view this involuntary association of
foreigners in what he looked upon as an occasion for inti¬
mate Spanish patriotic rejoicing with rather a jaundiced
eye, and he was somewhat sarcastic and biting in his com¬
ments. We all made allowances, however, for the strain
of the moment, and let his remarks pass without objec¬
tion, and without making the facile retort that our very
presence in Bilbao, ahead of the advance guards of his
army, was a proof of the valuable services that the corps
of war correspondents were rendering every day to the
cause of Nationalist Spain.

Then we saw the battalions of the Basque army, which
had offered to surrender, march along the Gran Via.
They carried the white flag, and two of the battalions piled
their arms in the middle of the street at the foot of one of
the great electric light standards—rifles, machine-guns,
revolvers in a great heap. The other three battalions,
whose depot was on the right bank of the Nervion,
crossed the river and dumped their arms in front of the
town hall. The men looked in good shape, though rather
thin and pale. Their uniforms were clean, and their rifles
and weapons were in the best of order. I learnt, however,

301

THE SPANISH WAR

that these battalions had not done much real fighting for
the past months, but had been kept in Bilbao as a sort of
local guard to overawe the Red extremists and prevent
them from burning and pillaging. It was thanks to their
presence that Bilbao was not burnt by extremists like the
men of the Karl Liebknecht battalion which, throughout
the Bilbao campaign, distinguished itself, not by its fight¬
ing qualities, but by the skill with which it dynamited,
burnt, and pillaged.

The famous “Fifth Column,” that is to say the mem¬
bers of Right political organisations who had succeeded
in remaining in hiding during the campaign, also took part
in the protection of the city. On the last night of the
occupation by the Reds, they appeared at various points
on the roof tops and began to fire on all groups of Red
militiamen who were trying to force their way into houses
or public edifices to set them on fire. The Red militia
suffered heavy losses from this sniping, and as it had no
time to take the buildings by storm, it simply evacuated
the city so as not to be caught by the advancing Nationalist
troops.

When we crossed the Nervion on our way back to our
cars, a tired thirsty body, we found that barges had been
towed into position across the river, with planks roughly
secured between them and the quays. I would have pre¬
ferred my waterlogged wherry, for the waters of the
Nervion were black and swirling, and the planks, which
were only eight inches broad, were swaying and very
insecure.

Sunday saw us all back in Bilbao, this time for the
triumphal entry of the troops—Requetes, Falangists, and
units from the Regular Army. All Bilbao turned out ta
greet them, and we marched along with them, but this

302

BILBAO

time, to appease all querulous spirits, we put our scarlet
berets in our pockets and walked bareheaded. There
were quite enough Requetes without our presence, and
the crowd this time was able to shout itself hoarse and
cheer the real heroes of the Bilbao campaign, the gallant
men of the Brigades of Navarre.

Little rest was to be given to the soldiers, for the pursuit
had to be continued at full speed. And so the rest of the
campaign with its marches and counter-marches towards
Santander went on. Village after village captured,
Vizcaya cleared of the foe, the province of Santander
entered, and the last steps taken to reduce the ultimate
stronghold of the Reds in the north of Spain. That done,
100,000 men with their immense train of artillery, their
squadrons of planes rendered available for other fields of
battle, confidence in the ranks of the Nationalists runs
high that soon the last battle may be engaged and that
final victory may crown their efforts. International
intervention is, self-confessedly, the sole hope at present
of the Valencia Government. The Barcelona Government
and Red Catalonia will not help the southern Red Govern¬
ment. The Catalan revolutionaries are living in a strange
state at the present moment. They are not waging war
against the Burgos Government. It is long since any
Catalan militia made a serious attempt against Huesca.
They are not even dreaming of what might be the retribu¬
tion when Valencia falls and when Franco’s victorious
troops march northward. Instead, they are enj oying their
usual political dissensions; one weak government is being
followed by another weaker still. Anarchists and Com¬
munists alternate in power and in arresting and shooting
each other. There is more fighting in the streets of
Barcelona, from time to time, than on the Aragon front.

3 °3

THE SPANISH WAR

Madrid, therefore, is the kef to the situation. The fall
of Madrid, either captured or surrounded, means the fall
of Red Communism in Spain, and Madrid is bound to fall
unless there is foreign intervention to save the Communist
regime. It is difficult, however, to believe that the people
of Great Britain, to speak of our own nation alone, would
be so foolish as to permit such a crime to be perpetrated.

There are people in London, but especially in Paris,
who have tried to make our flesh creep by extravagant
stories as to how Italy and Germany are securing a
political foothold in the Iberian peninsula. I would
recommend to all such that they pay a month’s visit to
Spain and talk to Spaniards. Spain has always been im¬
pervious to foreign influence, and in fact, often not very
grateful for foreign aid. Spain is intensely nationalistic
and individualistic. The moment the war is over the
Spaniards will thank their foreign allies and will point to
the harbours where the transports, duly beflagged, will be
waiting for them. And as for territorial concessions or
zones of influence in the Balearic islands or in Morocco,
that is all stuff and nonsense.

XI

THE FUTURE OF SPAIN

TTfTHEN the Civil War is over, when Catalonia, the
* ^ Asturias, and Viscaya, have surrendered, then the
real dangers and the real difficulties will begin. That is
a paradoxical phrase which I have heard many Spaniards
pronounce, and there is undoubtedly much truth in it.

Fighting side by side, especially if victory be not too
long delayed, and if in its path there be found minor
successes sufficient to interest the multitude and to main¬
tain their enthusiasm, keeps together political sects which
would otherwise be in opposition. War conditions and
the ever-present danger of a possible Communist victory,
which would mean in Spain death for scores of thousands
and ruin for everybody, are great counsellors of prudence.

General Franco knows that, having been a self-imposed
commander and ruler, his action was ratified by the
millions in Spain because of the dangers the country was
running, because the people knew that the Spain of
tradition, the Spain of the Catholic kings, was being
threatened by a foreign philosophy of violence and of
revolution.

Military juntas have ruled in Spain before now, but
they have never ruled for very long. They have changed
their nominal heads, they have changed their form, but
ultimately they have always had to call upon some form
of civil government, either absolute or parliamentary, to
take the reins of office from their hands.

Once the mortal dangers of the triumph of Communism

3 °5

THE SPANISH WAR

have been dispelled by victory, then the differences of
opinion which had been kept in the background must
come forward again. At present there is a war adminis¬
tration ruling the country, and ruling it fairly well. But
in times of peace Spain cannot be governed by military
commissions. Military requisitions and military pur¬
chases will have to come to an end. Normal rules of
commerce and banking will have to be restored.

General Franco has, it is true, sufficient authority,
presumably accrued at the end of war by victory, to main¬
tain for some time in Spain a purely civil dictatorship for
the purpose of restoring law and order and securing the
reconstruction of Spain’s industry and commerce, which
has suffered so severely. Once this has been done General
Franco will have to turn his mind to what gradual changes
may be necessary to prepare the way for the final civil
regime which is to govern the country in the future.

There are two obvious alternatives. There is the
Fascist totalitarian state with a dictator, with Franco
at its head, and there is a totalitarian state with a king
at the apex and beneath him a Prime Minister with
absolute powers as long as he enjoys his monarch’s confi¬
dence. With the collateral institution of a Chamber of
Corporations to advise on the technical questions of
public administration, commerce, industry, agriculture,
and labour, this would mean that sober public opinion
should normally reach the Sovereign and influence him
in his relations with the Prime Minister at the head of the
executive. A Prime Minister who became totally un¬
popular would in such a manner soon lose the confidence
of the monarch and be replaced by him. Political agita¬
tion would not, however, be allowed.

There are two bodies of opinion in Spain which stand

306

THE FUTURE OF SPAIN

roughly for these two solutions. There are the Falangists,
holding advanced social opinions, and in many cases, but
for the fact that they are Catholics and Patriots, little
different from the Socialists they have been fighting.
They desire a dictatorship pure and simple. Though it is
difficult in a civil war to ascertain exactly how political
views run, it may be said that the majority of the Falang¬
ists are, in theory at least, opposed to the restoration of
a monarchy. How far they would consider their political
doctrine forced them to fight against such a solution,
granted the majority of their other political aims were
satisfied, it is difficult to know.

The Falangists are also, and the Carlists to a lesser
degree, in a difficult situation, since General Franco, fore¬
seeing the dissensions and the rivalry which might arise
immediately after victory, took the bold step of forcing
the union of the two rival parties. There is now no
separate Carlist or Falangist militia, in name at least,
though it is difficult to deprive militia units of their
esprit de corps. There is now only one political party
in Spain and that is the united party of Falangists and
Carlists. Their programme is that of the Falangist Party
with reservations, while the Carlists have been promised
that when the time is ripe the question of monarchy may
be brought up for discussion. This later promise was,
indeed, given in such terms as almost implied a favourable
consideration.

The Carlists, who are the more sober of the two
organisations, accepted this decision with calm and indeed
with patriotic fervour, as they had already accepted the
enforced though honourable retirement into private life
of their leader, Don Manuel Fal Conde. The Falangists
as a majority, a great and overwhelming majority, also

3 ° 7

THE SPANISH WAR

accepted the dictates of General Franco. It is a fact that
since the imprisonment and execution of their first great
leader, Don Jose Antonio de Primo de Rivera, son of the
late dictator, the Falangists were without a head. Hedilla,
a sturdy, capable-looking man, had endeavoured to take
Don Jose’s place, many say by rather doubtful methods of
threats of personal violence, but he did not weigh as much
as a straw when he tried to place himself in opposition
to General Franco. When the unification of the two
militias was ordered Hedilla, with some outside support
and with a number of his local leaders, postulated for the
post of supreme head of the joint militias. If this had
been granted, he would have had more power than
General Franco. The Generalissimo, however, wisely
decreed that he himself would be the nominal head, and
that the effective authority would be exercised by an
Army general, actually General Monasterio. Hedilla took
violent objection to this and, believing that he was much
stronger than he really was, ventured to set himself up in
personal opposition to General Franco.

The scene has often been described to me, and if it is
not accurate in every detail I am certain that it is not sub¬
stantially false in any important feature. The Falangist
leader, who had hurriedly consulted his friends, and
who in fact seems to have been egged on by many of
them, rang up General Headquarters in Salamanca and
demanded to be received by the Generalissimo at two
o’clock the next afternoon. Hedilla arrived to time with
his customary escort of stalwarts in blue uniform carrying
sub-machine-guns. They waited down below while their
leader went up the double marble stairs past the Moorish
guards into an ante-chamber. A few minutes afterwards
the escort was invited into the guard-room' and there

308

THE FUTURE OF SPAIN

their weapons were taken from them, they being told that
at the Chief of State’s palace none were allowed to go
armed except the guard itself and such officers as were on
duty.

Meanwhile the great clock on the landing of the
bishop’s palace, for that was the seat of General Head¬
quarters at Salamanca, ticked slowly on while Hedilla
paced up and down impatiently in the red and gold tapes¬
tried room in which he was alone. Twice he rang the bell
and an aide-de-camp appeared, only politely to beg the
Falangist chief to wait in patience as the Generalissimo
was very busy. Finally it was nearly three o’clock when
Hedilla, vociferous with anger at what he looked upon as
a deliberate insult, was ushered into General Franco’s
presence. He strode across the room faster than the
officer who was accompanying him and began an angry
tirade. General Franco waved to a chair and bade him
take a seat while he signed to his aide-de-camp to with¬
draw. Nobody knows exactly what took place during the
interview, which lasted half an hour and was extremely
stormy, the sound of Hedilla’s voice being clearly heard
in the ante-chambers. But suddenly the bell rang, and
when General Franco’s aides-de-camp entered they were
briefly told to arrest Hedilla and hand him over to the
police. Hedilla himself seems to have been so amazed at
this order that he was speechless. Some eighty of his
most intimate friends and advisers had been arrested that
day and they were all indicted with having plotted against
the security of the State. Hedilla was allowed to go to
South America into exile. The case against him was
heard in his absence, and he and many of his companions
were sentenced to death, though this sentence was after¬
wards commuted to imprisonment or exile.

3°9

THE SPANISH WAR

The amazing thing about the whole dramatic event
was that though the news of what had taken place circu¬
lated widely within a very few days, there was not the
slightest resentment apparent in Falangist circles, and
General Franco was, if possible, even more popular than
before.

The Carlists, on the other hand, have shown no feeling
whatsoever as regards their forced union with the Falang¬
ists, for whom, frankly, they do not much care. The reason
for this is that the Carlists, with their century-old
tradition of “God, King, and Family,” have not the same
need of the personal magnetism of a born leader. Their
faith and their tradition stand them in equal good stead,
and they might even fight better merely for a man they
respected than for any general whose personality might
seem to them to be too great. The Carlists have been
accustomed throughout history to having many leaders.
They would make a dictator, however, of not a single
one of them. They demand, when the time is ripe, that
a King should be chosen supreme head of the State,
and beneath him that authority should be held by a
Prime Minister with his body of experts but without
the trammels of democratic constitutions and universal
suffrage, which they despise.

A great deal of religious mysticism is mingled with
their political faith and is upheld with an ardour typical
of intense fidelity to their cause. It should be remembered
that the last Carlist rising was brought to a close after
a terrible and bloody suppression as far back as 1876.
Since then, it was commonly thought by the superficial
Spanish politicians that Carlism had ceased to exist.
What, then, was their surprise when on July 18 and 19, on
the signal for the revolt against Communist barbarism

3 ID

THE FUTURE OF SPAIN

being given, the old Carlist emblems and flags waved
once more in the breeze, and thousands of armed and
trained men appeared from nowhere.

In Navarre, the Carlist stronghold, this might have
been expected. I have spoken, however, to eyewitnesses
in Andalusia and Estremadura and in the mountain
valleys of Castille, and they all have voiced their astonish¬
ment when suddenly the scarlet beret appeared and they
saw stalwart young men shouldering rifles and marching
off to join the army of religion and order.

Only the other day I travelled up a long and little-
known valley, that of the Jerte river, a tributary of the
Tagus, from Plasencia to El Barco de Avila, a mountain
town perched high on the plateau some forty miles from
Avila proper. I noticed that there, many miles from
Navarre and almost cut off from the outside world, the
villagers were all Carlists. The valley is one of Intense
beauty in the spring. Completely walled in by high
mountains and running almost straight from south to
north, it is privileged in being sheltered from the pre¬
vailing cold winds. The result is that every square foot
of soil is cultivated. The terraces cunningly cut in the
sides of the valley are full in April of flowering fruit trees,
carefully tended, and the grape vines are showing their
shoots. The solitary road which feeds the valley and
passes from side to side of the Jerte river in nearly every
case went over a temporary wooden bridge. The explana¬
tion was simple. A Red column at the end of July,
before the armies were organised, had tried to march up
the valley. The women and children were sent hurriedly
to El Barco de Avila, which was safe, and the men, taking
their rifles and even their shotguns, had massed to meet
the invader. They unfurled their red and gold banner,

3 11

THE SPANISH WAR

taken from its hiding-place in the church crypt and,
blowing up the bridges to render the enemy’s advance
difficult, they destroyed that column so that none was
left to return to Madrid and boast that he had set foot
in the Carlist valley of the Jerte.

That represents the Carlist spirit, and so also do the
following extracts which I make from the little book
known as the “Ordenanza del Requete”, Written by
General Varela, long before the rising, it is the Catechism,
as it were, of the Carlist youth. On its title page it lays
down the duties of the Carlist soldier as follows:

Thou of the scarlet beret wilt be: A soldier of the
Faith and of the Holy Cause of our Tradition.

Thou shalt faithfully fulfil thy duties, exalt thy prin¬
ciples and hold thyself in readiness for the call.

Thy watchword shall ever be: “God, Country, King.”

The qualities and duties of the perfect Carlist soldier
or Requete are then given as follows:

Be:

Knight without stain.

Disciplined in spirit.

Strong for the service.

Jealous of thy reputation.

Volunteer for danger.

Intrepid.

Excellent companion.

Incapable of betraying thy ideal.

Subordinate and punctual as is fitting.

Strong, both physically and morally.

Never frightened, always imperturbable.

The Scarlet Beret whose personal honour and spirit
312

THE FUTURE OF SPAIN

does not stimulate him to good deeds, is of little value
in the service of the Cause.

Suffer in silence, from cold, from heat, from hunger
and thirst and infirmities, pain and fatigues.

Let patience attend thy sufferings and thus valour
will reward thy patience.

Never forget that investiture as a soldier of the
Tradition implies exemplary discipline, and that that
virtue is the greatest of all duties of the Scarlet Beret
and the principal condition of our institutions.

With discipline and with the observance of thy glori¬
ous watchwords, then thou wilt be worthy of the
honour of being called a Scarlet Beret.

With such moral discipline and with the physical
excellence which comes from an open-air life, and for
the majority life in the high mountains of Navarre, it
can hardly be wondered that the Requetes or Scarlet
Berets (Boina Roja is the Spanish term for a Carlist
soldier) hold such a privileged place in the Spanish Army.

Their political intransigeance, the birthright of a
century-old tradition, has been laid aside for the duration
of the Civil War. Afterwards the Carlists are prepared to
see a military dictatorship continue to hold power until
such time as the dynastic and constitutional problem
may be solved. When that time comes the Carlists will
stand for their solution, which implies the return of a
Bourbon to the throne of Spain. The fact that the suc¬
cession is looked upon by them as being open, at present,
is symbolised by their nomination of Prince Xavier of
Bourbon-Parma to be “Regent of the Carlists’ Rights”
after the death in Vienna at an advanced age of the last
Carlist Legitimist Pretender.

313

THE SPANISH WAR

This devotion to the ideal of absolute monarchy, even
when no heir or candidate is immediately designated,
may seem extraordinary to some modern minds. All I
am concerned with is to lay emphasis on the fact that this
devotion does exist and partakes almost of the nature of
solemn religious dogma in the minds of hundreds of
thousands of sturdy young Spaniards of every class, from
that of the hidalgo to that of the student, from that of
the landowner to that of the ploughboy. I have said that
no candidate has been designated. That is true, though
naturally many possibilities have been canvassed. First
of all, the claims of King Alfonso himself are set aside as
being impossible of fulfilment.

The Carlists will not have him. They reproach him with
his bowing down to Liberal Constitutionalism, which is
anathema to them. They fear that he is not sufficiently re¬
ligious, and they dislike all the tendencies of the old court.

There are many Bourbons in the world. But there are
few who would be looked upon as fitting by the Carlists,
who, being particular as to the persons they allow to
serve in their movement, are even more so as to the head
they wish ultimately to place over all Spain. Undoubt¬
edly at present the name most debated is that of Don
Juan, younger son of King Alfonso. He is known to be of
good health, his training and career in the British Navy
is taken to be of excellent augury, and his good looks
would easily endear him to the Spanish people. Two
questions remain to be solved from the Carlist point of
view. Would he be willing to rule as a Carlist monarch,
and would his father be willing to stand aside in his favour ?
In many quarters, it is whispered, an affirmative answer
has been already given privately to both these questions.
It is certain that nothing has been made public.

3 n

THE FUTURE OF SPAIN

Another story is being whispered in Carlist circles
which has its importance. It is as follows: Early in
the war Don Juan wished to serve in the Nationalist
army, but was rather abruptly requested to leave the
country. The other day he wrote to General Franco
recalling this fact and offering to put his services and
special training at the disposal of the Nationalist Govern¬
ment. He asked to be given a warship to command.
General Franco, so the story goes, replied, thanking His
Royal Highness for his gallant offer and regretting that
he, the Generalissimo, could not accept it “because it
would be unfitting that a future King of Spain should
risk his life in a naval skirmish with Red pirate ships.”

It is felt everywhere that the ultimate decision, once
order has been restored, lies with General Franco, and
that were he to decide that a monarchical restoration
was in the best interests of Spain, he could easily sway
over all but the most obstinate Falangists to his way of
t hink ing. It is for that reason that so much importance
is attached in Royalist circles to the insistence of General
Franco in his recent speeches on the necessity for ret ainin g
“the historical traditions” of Spain and also to the articles,
published freely and without evoking disapproval, in
which the glorious conduct of General Monk, who re¬
stored Charles II in England, is extolled as being alone
worthy of a great patriot. -

I have recently seen General Franco in Seville. He was
in the great Alcazar or Moorish palace of Pedro the Cruel,
receiving the Moroccan chieftains and the pilgrims who
had returned from Mecca. The Alcazar is a glorious
building, its outer crumbling walls framed in bougain¬
villea, some purple tendrils of which were still outlined
on the red bricks, while great cascades of pink, white, and

THE SPANISH WAR

yellow roses fell from the old embrasures. Within, the
splendour of a royal palace is maintained, and powdered
flunkeys in breeches and scarlet silk stockings hold the
doors ajar.

In the marble patios, with their delicate pillars and
Moorish carving, the blare of trumpets and the sound of
Eastern music, as the multi-coloured throng of chanting
pilgrims passed through, seemed quite natural. Those
grave and bearded men, with their babouches , their white
robes, and their prayer beads, were at home in the marble
courtyards of their ancestors.

Within the ornate Ambassadors’ Hall, with its great
octagonal gilded ceiling, General Franco, Chief of State,
received first the Moorish dignitaries and then, bowing
low before him, the pilgrims. On a low dais, a great
scarlet and gold chair of state had been placed. But
General Franco stood in front of it to make his speech
of welcome and he remained standing, contrary to usual
eastern ceremonial, while the pilgrims passed.

I have spoken to General Franco of many questions,
including the future of Spain, but he always remains smil¬
ing and enigmatical when reference is made to the final
regime and says: “The people of Spain will make known
their will at the appropriate moment.”

BURGOS: THE ENTRY OF THE MOORISH TROOPS WELCOMED BY THE CIVILIAN POPULATION

THE ALCAZAR OF TOLEDO, SHOWING THE COURTYARD AFTER THE SIEGE

GENERAL FRANCO RECEIVING THE OATH OF ALLEGIANCE FROM PROMINENT CITIZENS Ol* BURGOS
AFTER HIS APPOINTMENT AS CHIEF OF STATE

THE GUADARRAMA FRONT, OCTOBER I936: DESTROYED BRIDGE ON THE ROAD FROM VALMOJADO

TO YUNCOS

GENERAL VARELA AND A GROUP OF HIS STAFF OFFICERS

12. DURING THE ADVANCE ON MADRID

I 3 . NATIONALIST TROOPS GOING INTO ACTION ON THE MADRID FRONT

14. THE AUTHOR, WITH VICTOR CONSOLE {centre) AND JEAN

d’hospital ( 'right ) at brunete, November 1936

ON THE MADRID FRONT, NOVEMBER I 3 TH, I93& THE AUTHOR, WITH
COLONEL TELLA (left), WHO MAD BEEN WOUNDED THAT MORNING

1 8 . ENTRY OF THE CAREIST TROOPS INTO TOLOSA

THE ENTRY INTO BILBAO*.

20 .

SALAMANCA, NOVEMBER iS, I 9 3&

OFFICIAL RECOGNITION OF THE SEANISK NATIONAL*!

BY ITALY AND GERMANY

SCENES AT THE
GOVERNMENT